New Orleans provides turbulent backdrop for 'K-Ville'
It's easy to root for "K-Ville," or at least for the idea of "K-Ville." Fox's new cop series is named after "Katrinaville," the post-traumatic muddle of tumbled debris and flood-strafed neighborhoods that is now New Orleans. The show's crime plots emerge out of the fury, abandonment, and callous exploitation that rack the city, and the "K-Ville" cops - the Felony Action Squad - go to extremes to rein in the chaos.
The series, which premieres tonight at 9 on Channel 25, is structured as a police buddy drama, but every scene inevitably comes down to one volatile cop, Marlin Boulet, and the actor who plays him, Anthony Anderson. Living in the ruins of the Ninth Ward, Boulet is New Orleans. He's a soulful, temperamental man who seeks out a bowl of gumbo when he needs to reflect. Like the city he'll never leave, Boulet has been betrayed by those he needs most - his wife, who is taking their daughter to Atlanta, and his former squad partner, who went AWOL during the hurricane.
His new partner, Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser), is so quiet and vague, he all but disappears next to the righteous passion of Boulet and his mission to keep hope alive.
Anderson, who bounces back and forth between comedy (" 'Til Death") and drama ("The Shield"), takes Boulet's righteousness and runs with it - too far, unfortunately. At moments, Anderson's heartfelt performance successfully con veys honor and commitment; too often, though, he is full of sanctimony and sermonizing. He doesn't talk so much as lecture. If Anderson pulled back, even let gallows humor seep into his demeanor, there might be room for our emotions. Instead, he plays the martyr, feeling the tragedy more than anyone else ever could. We've all known people who have to suck up all the air in the room.
In one short scene, playing Boulet's broken ex-partner Charlie, Derek Webster shows how actorly restraint can be so much more powerful than Anderson's more tormented approach. Looking deep into the eyes of the bitter, unforgiving Boulet, Charlie says, "My friend, how far do you want me to fall?" It's the most resonant line in the premiere.
As Anderson and the show's writers twist and shout to make points about the desperation and valiance of New Orleans, "K-Ville" becomes less than it could be. Tonight's crime plot is set in motion after a shooting at a Katrina charity event, and the cops proceed to rifle through all levels of society in search of a motive. But that plot comes off as an afterthought, something thrown in to frame the portrait of Boulet. The show would benefit enormously by paying more attention to the crime stories, and letting the pain left in Katrina's wake emerge incidentally, undeniably.
I kept longing to find some of the subtlety and indirection of HBO's "The Wire" in "K-Ville." Both shows are laden with systemic disarray and failure. But on "The Wire," steeped in the drug trade, crooked politics, and educational woes of Baltimore, the social ills come out through the characters and their actions; there isn't a hint of oration in the script or in the acting. And that makes the tragedy infinitely more effective.
The atmosphere is rich in "K-Ville," which films in New Orleans and brings millions of production dollars to town. There is nothing soundstagy about the show, whose resourceful camerawork takes full advantage of the local textures. And the potential for dramatic crime stories tinged with racial, economic, and governmental tensions two years after Katrina is bottomless. If "K-Ville" can take it down a notch, it just might rise a lot higher.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
