Snowfall

A program with intriguing characters that tell a taught and engrossing story, Snowfall is a promising new FX series.

The most striking thing about Snowfall, though, is that it never seems less exciting, less special, than when it’s doing the standard Scorsese/Tarantino thing and putting groups of treacherous men (and a few women) at cross purposes, then watching them threaten and bluff each other until the guns come out (or don’t).

The good news is that Snowfall, the searing FX drama about the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, does start moving at dazzling speed after a slow, plodding start. The bad news is that this occurs somewhere about the fourth episode.

At its best, Snowfall illustrates the unintended consequences and collateral damage associated with drugs -- characters enter into new alliances at their peril -- while revisiting the CIA's role and shady dealings to advance its foreign-policy objectives.

Snowfall mostly delivers on its promise. But it also benefits from having more room to breathe than most freshman dramas. If Snowfall really wants to establish any kind of empire, it’ll have to run leaner in future installments.

Well-produced and particularly well-acted newcomer with a lot of moving parts, potentially too many.

The episodic writing is clean, with a sturdy structure and traditional arcs. More often than not, what happens in the first few minutes comes back around in the final few. But given how much TV is out there and how competitive the market is because of it, it’s less interesting to watch anything familiar.

Snowfall will feel like too much work for some viewers. But those who stick with it will be rewarded with a drama that’s both involving and important.

Created by John Singleton with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron, Snowfall is a good-looking production. It gets its music from turntables and boomboxes and it reminds us that South Central Los Angeles, for all its notoriety, has a lot of tree-lined streets and perfectly decent houses with front yards. It also reminds us that crack cocaine was not so much a brand new problem as the consequence of several larger and longer-simmering problems.

It’s the regular ensemble of the show that really makes Snowfall work. Idris is a fantastic find, conveying a combination of intelligence and innocence that makes Franklin’s arc feel genuine. ... The first half of the season, in which the writers are allowed to build character instead of feeling like they have to do something as big as chronicling the history of a culture-changing drug, is stronger than the second.

There are times when Snowfall tries too hard for poignant irony, such as setting the scene of a vicious beat-down endured by young Franklin to the breezy beauty of Bill Withers’s song “Lovely Day.” But if you’re in the mood for a dark but sunny, meticulously detailed TV-show-as-novel narrative, Snowfall may draw you in.

Snowfall doesn’t get all the way there in season one, but it comes further than you’d expect. And inside its veins runs something vital and alive and different.

Though the show is very skillfully made and impeccably performed overall, it suffers a little from the bloated storytelling issues that are currently endemic to the industry.

For now, it’s a good-looking collection of clichés, dull sensationalism, and echoes of better pulp.

Snowfall is competently made and acted. But its images are just too destructive all around.