Quarry

15

I’d had Quarry in my “to watch” queue for several years. Just waiting for it to be available via streaming. And waiting. And waiting. Until I realized my local library — just steps from my house — has a decent archive of DVDs you can check out. As luck would have it, I have a lovely DVD player and a soft-spot for physical media. This is the origin story of how Quarry came into my life. I do find it interesting that this was one of six total original Cinemax productions (including Banshee), a channel mostly known for late-night skin flicks and soft-core foreign dubs. Because it felt way more HBO-level prestige than what you’d expect. No that it was totally immune to Cinemax’s core sex-and-nudity competency, but those scenes were bolt-ons to a really decent period crime drama that felt and looked high-end, expensive and well crafted. Which is probably why it was canceled after one season.

My only other experience with Cinemax originals was the aforementioned Banshee. An absolutely bonkers show filled with tons of gratuitous sex and violence and so much mayhem that it was laughable. Which is kind of built into that show’s DNA. It’s over-the-top and ridiculous in a winking way that lets you know these are cartoon characters doing cartoonish things. Quarry is on a whole different level. It is a deadly serious show. Dark and gritty. Set in 1972, it is about a man, Mac Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), returning from his second tour of duty in Vietnam. He and his fellow solider / friend, Arthur Solomon (Jamie Hector), return to public scrutiny and hatred after being accused, but acquitted of, a massacre of women and children in a Vietnamese village. Basically being abandoned by their government to fend for themselves after sacrificing for their country, they both struggle to adjust back to life and find meaningful work. Arthur with a wife (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and children, Mac with his wife, Joni (Jodi Balfour). Just as their desperation is reaching a crescendo, along comes The Broker (Peter Mullan), first offering Mac a chance to make a life-changing amount of money to put his ability to kill to good use. After Mac passes, the job is offered and accepted by Arthur, who has a family to support.

One of the things this show has in spades is atmosphere. Set in Memphis, it is jam packed with music. Blues, rock and gospel music. Almost every scene has diegetic music either being played live by a band or on a record or radio in the room. It really helps set the place and time and surrounds the dark, lived-in nature of the narrative with some heft. I honestly have no clue where they actually filmed the show, but to my coastal elite eyes and ears it certainly felt like what I imagine Memphis to be. The show truly leans into it the way 70s urban crime movies leaned into gritty New York as a character itself, which gives the thing a richness and era-specific air that is unmistakable and cool. Adding in the Vietnam aspect — which has been a part of cinematic and television history since that war’s inception — also cemented it in a time of upheaval both politically and racially in the US where the tinderbox nature of things translated to the personal stories of the men readjusting to a society on the edge. The show does a good job of showing, without being overly preachy about it, how we treated our soldiers coming back from war. Including Mac, who is clearly suffering from PTSD, but is denied any kind of consequential treatment from the veterans administration because the system has to triage an overwhelmed system filled with soldiers returning minus limbs and more evident trauma than the hidden nature of his mental damage. They manage to make Mac a relatively sympathetic character, but also fill him with enough uncontrolled anger and menace that we are never quite sure where he sits.

At the heart of the show is the delicate relationship between Mac and Joni. All of which is tenuous at best as a growing bitterness settles in with Mac as things don’t go his way. And is even further tested after Arthur is murdered during his first job for The Broker. Because Mac — who, remember, first denied taking on this assassin assignment — is blackmailed into it after the up-front money Arthur was given goes missing and his family’s safety is put on the chopping block until Mac pays down that money by doing the jobs Arthur was pre-paid to do. Through an intermediary — an incredibly odd and wonderfully 70s weirdo, Damon Herriman — Mac is given a car, a name and a gun to take care of each target. The first of which acts to further unravel the relationship between he and Joni and entangle his personal life and his new criminal undertaking. While this show could easily fall into the crime-of-the-week cadence with Mac being given a new assignment each episode, the series keeps the story tight and ongoing, embroiling Mac further and further into Memphis’ criminal underworld and creating really memorable characters to surround him. None of whom are necessary all bad or all good. Which is generally a decent sign of good writing. In fact, there were times where I got some Mad Men vibes, despite the two shows being nothing alike. It was that period quality and the ambiguity of character and the oscillating feelings they engendered that created an ongoing interest in seeing where things would go next.

That all said, I can’t imagine this show is for everyone. It is dark. It is violent. There is very little humor or lightness. The series, presumably not knowing if they’d get a second season, actually ended in a really satisfactory way that somehow brought everything back around, but left enough ambiguity to easily move into an extended story. Apparently the show is based on a series of Quarry novels written by a really prolific mystery writer over the last 50 years named Max Allan Collins (thus the unnamed character in his novels named Mac here), so there is an unending stream of content should they have cared to continue the series. I don’t pretend to understand why some things make it and others don’t, but in the vein of other crime shows like Breaking Bad, I’m not sure why this wasn’t given more room to grow. I suspect it was the cost of the period stuff — though Cinemax did put on The Knick for two seasons before canceling that period drama. Perhaps 2016 just wasn’t the right timing for this show. Or maybe it was marketed poorly. Or maybe nobody subscribed to Cinemax, or were paying too much attention to the huge election that was only weeks away when this premiered. Whatever the case, it’s a really excellent season of television that deserves broader recognition than it’s gotten. Or at least a streaming home where people like me don’t have to walk down the street to retrieve it.