Let no one say “The Lowdown” is shy about its influences. Ethan Hawke’s hero, a Tulsa “truthtorian” by the name of Lee Raybon, ruffles feathers as a freelance reporter — but for his not-all-that-steady day job, Lee runs a used bookstore. His stock in trade are yellowed first editions of the midcentury crime novels to which the FX drama is clearly an homage.
But creator Sterlin Harjo, following up on the superlative coming-of-age comedy “Reservation Dogs,” doesn’t stop there. Authors like Jim Thompson and Erle Stanley Gardner are liberally name-dropped. When Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), the black sheep of a powerful local family on whom Lee has just published an exposé, commits suicide in the show’s opening scene, he conceals a note in a bookshelf of faded paperbacks. And when an old friend of Lee’s takes stock of the ensuing firestorm, he sums it up like this: “You’re living in some bad crime novel now, huh?”
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Harjo and Hawke, also an executive producer, completely nail the vibe “The Lowdown” is going for. Partially based on the late writer Lee Roy Chapman, Hawke’s Lee is a shambolic, hangdog hero in the proud tradition of Philip Marlowe of “The Long Goodbye” (specifically the Elliot Gould-Robert Altman version) and Doc Sportello of “Inherent Vice,” with all the wild-eyed righteousness of Hawke’s John Brown from Showtime series “The Good Lord Bird.” Lee means well and has the right enemies, like the skinheads so offended by his coverage they break into his filthy apartment above the bookshop to give him a beating. But he’s not exactly laser focused — and neither, thankfully, is “The Lowdown.” Lee wants to figure out whether Dale really killed himself, and whether Dale’s older brother Donald (Kyle MacLachlan) is involved, and how the Washbergs are connected to a company buying up properties around historically black North Tulsa. But he’ll also spend an entire episode hanging out with a random pair of caviar farmers, because the destination of “The Lowdown” isn’t half as fun as the journey.
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The sordid history of Oklahoma’s second-largest city has become a kind of cottage industry for Hollywood in recent years. In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese made an epic tragedy of the Osage murders, a conspiracy to take the lives and transfer the wealth of the state’s Native population. (Lee’s investigation traces the Washbergs’ wealth to this very same period.) Damon Lindelof’s take on “Watchmen” began with the infamous mob attack on Tulsa’s Wall Street, a historic center of black-owned business that was razed to the ground by a racist horde. “The Lowdown” fits neatly into this socially conscious, place-specific trend, but Harjo brings a cockeyed sensibility all his own.
“The Lowdown” boasts bigger names and a more urban milieu than “Reservation Dogs,” but that series’ fans will recognize its humor and affection for a colorful, carefully built-out cast of characters — not to mention faces like that of Kaniehtiio Horn, the “Deer Lady” who now plays Lee’s ex Samantha. Lee’s incompetent “security,” Native ne’er-do-wells Waylon (Cody Lightning) and Cousin Henry (Jude Barnett), feels lifted straight out of the earlier show, down to the hilariously inept rap videos they record instead of looking out for skinheads. It’s like Mose and Mekko never left.
Hawke himself, of course, guest starred on “Reservation Dogs” as the absentee father of Devery Jacobs’ Elora Danan. Father-daughter relationships are also key to “The Lowdown”; Lee and Samantha have a 13-year-old, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, holding her own against Hawke), who becomes an eager accomplice in his muckraking, much to her mother’s chagrin. Lee, prone to folksy aphorisms like “sometimes you’ve gotta wave with one hand while you get what you want with the other,” explains his profession to her thusly: “We call up bad guys. Make ‘em answer the phone.”
“The Lowdown” is a paean to more than one form of endangered print media. Lee somehow writes for not one, but two Tulsa-market periodicals: the Heartland Press, which he has to frequently clarify is a “longform magazine” and not a newspaper, as well as a strip club’s “booty rag,” which wedges some articles between all the bared posteriors. And while pedantry is not Harjo’s style, “The Lowdown” is unmistakably idealistic about the value of a free press to right historical wrongs. (After the Wasbhergs, Lee’s next target is a tycoon in legally dubious possession of a Civil Rights relic.) The show may be preaching to my particular profession’s choir, but in this dire information environment, I’ll take what I can get.
“Fuckin’ white men that care,” one of Lee’s acquaintances laments. “Saddest of the bunch.” But “The Lowdown” is anything but melancholy. It’s a joyful, ragtag survey of society’s frayed edges. Some, like Lee, aren’t fit to live anywhere else; others, like closeted introvert Dale or Marty (the great Keith David), a Black private eye in the Washbergs’ employ, are just working with the hand they’ve been dealt. Only five of the eventual eight episodes were screened for critics, so I can’t say where “The Lowdown” goes. I can state for a fact, however, that it’s a pleasure to watch it get there at its own leisurely pace.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this review called “The Lowdown” a limited series — it’s a drama. The first two episodes of “The Lowdown” will premiere on FX on Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET and stream on Hulu the next day, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Tuesdays and streaming Wednesdays.