BOLD, BONKERS BANSHEE
With its ultraviolence and colourful characters, series returns for its fourth and final season,
There is no shortage of TV series that aspire to be more than they are — True Detective Season 2, for example — but other shows live a more honest, fuller life in their own skins.
And three seasons into its run, Cinemax/HBO’s Banshee makes clear it’s a production that falls into the latter category.
Bonkers where most other action/ dramas strive for authenticity, and underscored with bold colours where many series live for greys, Banshee isn’t perfect, but here’s what it is: engrossing and creative, with a zombie’s insatiable blood lust and a vigilante’s steely purpose.
If you’re a liberal-helpings-of-gore aficionado and can suspend reality easily and often, you’ll want to watch this show.
Its deliciously over-the-top third season will be released April 5 on Blu-ray, and its fourth and final season kicks off Friday (11 p.m.) on HBO Canada.
There’s really nothing like it in serialized TV and you’ll be surprised how much you enjoy a product that feels like it hijacked its way out of Ronald Reagan’s first-term-as-president America and settled in nicely in the high-definition age.
The premise of the show is simple enough (and here’s your official spoiler alert): an ex-convict (Antony Starr), on the run from a Mafia boss for whom he once worked, assumes the identity of Lucas Hood, a newly appointed sheriff in small-town Pennsylvania, but there are few tropes to be found in the 30 episodes that have aired.
For example: through three seasons, Banshee’s cast of characters has included:
A love interest (Ivana Milicevic) and former partner of Hood’s who was a jewel thief with mob ties before she assumed a new identity to live a domesticated life as a mother of two and a real estate agent.
A transgender computer hacker (Hoon Lee)
A vicious businessman (Ulrich Thomsen) shunned by the Amish community in which he was raised
A seething man-mountain (Geno Segers) and leader of a native American tribal gang named the Redbones
AUkrainian gangster kingpin (Ben Cross)
A former neo-Nazi skinhead turned deputy sheriff (Tom Pelphrey)
And if you thought those character descriptions were colourful, get a load of the names of Banshee’s characters: Sugar Bates; Brock Lotus; Anastasia Rabitov; Clay Burton; Kai Proctor; Chayton Littlestone.
You’d think we were talking about roles from the Team America: World Police movie, but somehow Banshee makes them work.
Maybe that’s because the fight scenes — which are damned near feral and look as painful as any UFC slugfest — add a grit and gravitas to the mix.
Or maybe it’s because co-creators Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler joyfully dive headfirst into the pulpy world of the show, and bear hug every last drop of emotion and tension out of it.
Whatever the case, the end result feels like the best kind of noirish B- movie and you’ll be hard-pressed to not binge your way through it until you’re like the rest of us, waiting for the final eight episodes of Season 4 to bring the tale to what undoubtedly will be a deliriously savage conclusion.
Banshee doesn’t skimp on the gratuitous sex scenes that have become a staple of most cable programming these days, but there’s a feminist element that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Milicevic’s character is as ferocious as any other on the show and, as a rebellious Amish teenager, Lili Simmons ( True Detective, Hawaii Five-0) projects the same guile and obsession with power we see from the male cast members.
Midway through the third season, Hood is told that everything he touches turns to blood. There isn’t a better overall theme for Banshee; it’s an exercise in destruction and chaos, with a few pit stops built in for characters to tend to their wounds.
But it’s a testament to the craftsmanship of the showrunners that the series’ cult following — who like to call themselves Fanshees — have developed the same craving for pain, suffering and bug-eyed, fangs-out retribution that they’re watching onscreen.