Hightown

“Hightown” loses some of its momentum in later episodes — the story bogs down a bit and the pieties about addiction and taking control of your life move more into the foreground. But it never entirely loses its flavor. It’s good enough that if it were a little better — a little quirkier, a little more urgent — there’d be nothing to complain about, and that’s pretty good.

With every episode, Estimond adds new fascinating layers to his character, shedding light on the code he honors which separates him from animalistic henchmen such as Kizzle (white-haired Edmund Donovan, camping it up). He also sports a surprising sense of humor, earning laughs when you least expect them. ... Thankfully, when the show needs to be deadly serious, it is to often riveting effect, grounding its yarn of corruption in the tragedy and lack of closure that its subject matter demands.

Hightown works off a solid, formulaic base. It also relies on coincidences. ... The sense of place that is conjured is remarkable, and how Provincetown’s industries (fishing, drug-trafficking, tourism) and surface attractions work on and power each other is attentively and cleverly done.

Grisly thriller Hightown lays on the raunch and violence so thickly, you might mistake it for classic soft-core Cinemax. And yet there's a grim, propulsive urgency to the exploits of Jackie Quinones. [11 - 24 May 2020, p.7]

There’s nothing glaringly wrong with it, just as there’s nothing so intriguing about it that you want to watch it week-to-week or even binge it once Starz has aired all the episodes.

“Hightown” is an uneven mash-up of incongruous themes, a veritable grab bag of provocations that may have felt edgy 20 years ago. That may have been forgivable if the plot was halfway intriguing, but the twists are about as surprising as a drag queen in P-town.