Put this one-and-done sunshine noir drama on your summer watch list

Terriers ★★★★
7plus, Monday December 23

Terriers is close to the ideal private eye show for 2024. A sunshine noir crime drama set in San Diego and blessed with a deliciously defiant tone, it has a 13-episode season that presents as a procedural. Each episode follows the rogue instincts of two best friends and private detectives, ex-cop Henry “Hank” Dolworth (Donal Logue) and ex-con Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James). But their first case never truly goes away, staying on their heels and mushrooming into a rugged conspiracy the pair can’t avoid.

Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James in Terriers: a close to ideal sunshine noir crime drama.Credit:

The show is funny, has a rogue sensibility, and keeps one step ahead of your genre expectations. The only drawback is that it was made in 2010.

Now available on a free-to-air platform, having spent much of the past 14 years sequestered on Foxtel and then Disney+, Terriers is a telling example of how the needle has gone from one extreme to the other on scripted television. When it was released, Ted Griffin’s show was considered too much of a deviation from the era’s reigning procedurals. It was being compared to House, Bones, Monk and Castle. A season-long arc threw people. Now that overarching storylines are the norm, and audiences yearn for a little case-of-the-week contentment, would Terriers not be enough of a diversion?

Either way, this is a one-and-done season that devotees of detective fiction, protagonists who knowingly make bad decisions because they refuse to back down, and pithy dialogue should make time for. Griffin, a Hollywood screenwriter whose movie credits include Ocean’s Eleven and Matchstick Men, pushed his feel for indolence, double-crosses and idiosyncrasies hard up against the cable television conventions of 2010 when Terriers debuted on the American network FX. Lack of an audience got the series cancelled, but it’s ripe for rediscovery.

Terriers has a heavy Elmore Leonard feel.Credit: Patrick McElhenney/FX

With a heavy Elmore Leonard feel, the show’s foundation is Hank’s obstinacy. A smart police detective but not a wise one, he was dishonourably discharged from the force after an investigation went sideways, fell into alcoholism, and lost his wife, Gretchen (Kimberly Quinn). He, like Britt, is constantly short of money, though Hank’s stress has a self-inflicted foundation: to hold on to the past, he’s buying his former family home back from Gretchen, who is determined to move on after their divorce.

Logue has worked non-stop for the past 25 years. He’s been an estimable part of the supporting cast in ER, Sons of Anarchy, Vikings and half a dozen other shows, but Hank was the perfect leading-man role for him. Bearded and burly, Logue unfolds Hank’s charm without a side glance to seek a little sympathy. The character, who’s also trying to keep an eye on his mentally ill sister, Steph (Karina Logue, Donal’s real-life sibling), is mostly decent at heart, but also wilful and a terrific liar.

“On my mother’s grave,” pledges Hank when confronted by his former partner, Detective Mark Gustafson (Rockmond Dunbar). “Your mother was cremated,” Mark replies.

Sometimes Hank and Britt try to catch a fugitive for the reward money – surprise! It doesn’t go as they planned – and sometimes they sit in Hank’s pick-up and riff about whether they need business cards and what an appropriate mascot might be. With some great talents chipping in – one episode is directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out) and written by Leslye Headland (The Acolyte) – Terriers is a great hang with genuine stakes. Put it on your summer watch list.

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