City on a Hill

It’s tremendous fun. ... As a bloody caper, City on a Hill is a little bit in love with itself, but it kind of knows it so should be forgiven.

It’s good, if you like gritty crime drama and crooked cops; and, based on the three episodes available for review, it’s going to get better. ... The scope of “City on a Hill” is more ambitious than most of the Boston stories we’ve seen, including Affleck’s “The Town” and “Gone Baby Gone,” and that gives it distinction.

The dialogue is crisp but never sounds forced or clichéd. These are fast-talkers and fast-movers who often speak and act before they think, and it takes someone who has a history of managing large casts across multiple storylines to really bring a show like this one together. It helps to have an ensemble who all seems to be on the same page as well, and there’s not a weak link in this one.

Some scenes tend to devolve into a lot of bureaucratic jargon and off-the-cuff mentions of Boston locations that might lose anyone unfamiliar with the city. Where the series excels, however, is in the level of detail it brings to its individual characters. ... Such a confident grasp of character goes a long way toward smoothing over the show’s somewhat clumsier big-picture narrative, as City on a Hill proves itself as effective at small, interlocking details as it is at purely hammy thrills.

After an energetic start and a nice twist at the end of Episode 1, City on a Hill slows its pace a bit.

“City on a Hill” can get a little lost in the bureaucracy of what it’s building, but those details are also what keep it grounded. ... For now, it’s well-balanced and focused on purposeful progress, rather than succumbing to churlish attitudes or salacious material.

There are no complaints about the performances in this piece, particularly from the principals and Amanda Clayton, who lends a grimy steel to the role of Frankie’s beautician wife Cathy. Even so, it isn’t as if the kind of story in this “City” hasn’t been told elsewhere and many, many, many times on television and in other places such as New York, Chicago and, hint hint, Baltimore.

The cast, led by Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge, is exceptional. The intricate web of story lines is intriguing. And there are several moments when “City On a Hill” jumps to startling life, providing us a glimpse of the series it could become.

The period detail stays on the right side of showy, but most important, people here inhabit spaces appropriate to their class and character. The acting builds out the reality too: The performances sell the material, even when the material seems poorly motivated, confusing or just unlikely.

It also feels like a Showtime show in how it doesn't have the style or intelligence of the greatest cable dramas, and is more about being entertaining than having big ideas. But it's plenty entertaining, and it knows what it is.

None of it feels particularly fresh, but most of it’s well-executed, and the talent in front of and behind the camera is promising enough to earn patience. It seems like the sort of show you’ll like if you like this sort of show.

City on a Hill feels like a throwback in 2019 because it's not worried about binge-pacing or whether or not you've overcommitted to too many other shows. It has a confidence in its novelistic approach. That's admirable but not without problems, of course: The world building is impressive but the pace is worrisome.

City On A Hill is watchable enough, with strong production values and some great location work, and it’s possible that the show will find its footing after a shaky start, as Billions, its predecessor in this Showtime slot, did. In its first three episodes, however, it’s far too dependent on what has come before.

The show is inessential, but potential abounds. [14/21 Jun 2019, p.101]

Although City on a Hill oozed quality, it also suffered slightly from the sense we’d seen it all before.

Your appreciation will rise and fall on your enjoyment of seeing Boston and its people portrayed as profoundly racist and corrupt.

Showrunner Tom Fontana, whose previous series include the iconic St. Elsewhere and Homicide, knows how to commandeer a sprawling cast and story. But in City on a Hill there’s too much silliness to rein in and too many clichés to overcome.

The actual heisting is kept to a minimum, but there’s still a thrill in the inexorability that haunts Frankie and Jimmy’s scenes.

The performances and production values may be enough to keep you around to see whether the story picks up steam, and whether MacLean finds more original ways to shape his ideas into drama. “City on a Hill” keeps threatening to be interesting and exciting, but so far it hasn’t pulled off the job.

The series starts from a relatively rich premise. ... Even as the aperture expands, little gets better: the show’s broad view of a city of wrongdoers and accomplices features many familiar types (from sad-eyed Irish brothers in crime to Rohr’s long-suffering wife, played by a poorly-used Jill Hennessy) and little sense of what life in this particular place is really like. Hodge is, by far, the best thing about the show, blending rectitude with real sorrow and moral confusion.

Jerks have all the fun--or at least that's how it seems in a '90s-set drama that, despite thick Boston accents and local color, is as generic as its title and twice as cliched. [24 Jun - 7 Jul 2019, p.11]