Damnation (2017)

Bleak and nasty, Damnation brings a "Mr. Robot" vibe to the Depression era, wrapping class warfare and hostility toward wanton capitalism in a drab, dusty package. The result is a bracing look backward informed by present-day parallels, in another show that feels like an outlier for USA -- one that should have critical admirers but might struggle to satisfy TV's capitalist demands.

It’s often predictable and to the grimdark end of the Quality Drama tonal spectrum, but the period itself is fairly novel (Carnivale was over a decade ago), and it plays its familiar tunes with brisk competence.

There’s timeliness to the never dull “Damnation” despite its period setting, particularly in episode two when a professor (Gabriel Mann, “Revenge”) disparages the “unwashed rural masses.” Just don’t go looking for any heroes: There are none to be found.

Damnation spends so much of its early going caught in a spiral of misdirection that once the emphasis on bloodshed, doom, and duplicity wanes, a series with sharper insights might emerge. But in its current form, it’s a punishing watch, one with not much more to offer than an animalistic view of human nature.

Damnation is indisputably a good-looking show, and I think it has some things on its mind, though I wish the script had allowed the show to go more aggressively into the Man vs. Bank gear executive producer David Mackenzie brought to Hell or High Water. It's hampered by being a series that keeps its attentions most frequently honed on the aspect that engages me the least.

Though it works hard to check the boxes of an "important show," the series leaves two fields unticked: interesting and new. [10 Nov 2017, p.45]

It’s too often dull, tonally inconsistent, and just poorly written.