City on a Hill (2019-present) * * *

 

(on Showtime)

Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, Jill Hennessy, Lauren E. Banks, Jonathan Tucker, Mark O' Brien, Amanda Clayton

City on a Hill is entering its third season and I'm amazed to find I did not review previous seasons.  Set in early 1990's Boston, City on a Hill is a gritty crime and political drama focusing on the uneasy partnership between FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Bacon) and assistant DA Decourcy Ward (Hodge), who form an alliance to take down serial bank robbers in the first season and murdering drug dealers and crooked cops in the second season.   Ward originally tries to be a straight arrow, but he finds that won't do in Boston, where crimes are solved with integrity not always intact.   Sometimes the rules must be bent, broken, or run over with a car.   Jackie is the kind of agent who can help with that; a man who is ethically impaired in both his professional and personal life. 

Jackie's long-suffering wife Jenny (Hennessy) is growing tired at long last of Jackie's infidelities, drug habit, and long hours away from home.   She hasn't held a job in many years and finds she lacks the wherewithal to function on her own.   Jenny's breakthrough season is in season two, where she actually dares to go back to school and venture out into the sometimes cold, unforgiving world.   She befriends an earnest priest, but he is soon scared off by Jackie, who even though he is unfaithful would not dare let Jenny be.   Jackie is a politically incorrect throwback of a person with enough skeletons in his closet to fill a graveyard, but yet he sometimes wants to do the right thing.   Maybe to cover a past indiscretion or maybe because he kind of likes Decourcy.   He sees Decourcy as the man he was long ago before cynicism got the better of him. 

Decourcy's wife Siobhan, a high-powered lawyer who at times finds herself defending the suspects her husband is prosecuting.    She wants to support her husband, while doing her job, and these don't always mesh well.   Further fanning the flames is a local community leader who sees the Boston police as untrustworthy in its dealings with the Black community.   Siobhan is a longtime ally of the leader, but also discovers secrets about him which muddy the waters.    Jackie himself has a checkered past catching up to him, especially with the introduction of a new boss who wants to play by the rules and has no use for a guy like Jackie in her agency.  

What keeps City on a Hill moving along are the performances, with Bacon, Hodge, and Hennessy giving us nuanced portrayals of people trying to navigate their way through a Boston where the Big Dig is taking place as a microcosm of how things run there.   If you're trying to walk in between the raindrops, then you're performing a fool's errand, one Jackie gave up on a long time ago.   The end of the second season seemed like a perfect wrap-up for the series, but season three is off to a promising start.   Jackie, no longer with the FBI, serves as the head of security for a rich friend having an illicit affair with a college student.   Always looking for redemption, Jackie may be able to find it here, but time will tell.