Recently, AMC TV channel finished showing the crime-drama thriller «Parrish» with Giancarlo Esposito («Kaleidoscope», «Gentlemen») in the title role. Its plot is based on the British miniseries «Driver», which consisted of three episodes and was broadcast on BBC One from September 23 to October 7, 2014. In the review below, we will tell you how the American version of the story about a driver in trouble turned out.
Pluses:
the series manages to keep the attention well, especially in the second half of the season; excellent acting from Giancarlo Esposito; good technical performance
Minuses:
the plot is completely devoid of surprises; other performers are lost against the background of Esposito's performance; there could have been more action
«Parish»
Genre crime drama, thriller
Authors Danny Brocklehurst, Sunu Gonera
Starring Giancarlo Esposito, Zachary Momo, Paula Malcomson, Skeet Ulrich, Bradley Whitford
Premiere AMC
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
Gracian Parish, simply Gray to others, is a man with a complicated past. He lives in New Orleans with his wife Rose and teenage daughter Makayla, and is trying to get a loan from a bank to keep his nonprofit car fleet afloat. But the soulless capitalist institution refuses to provide him with financing, so he has to find another way to save his barely surviving business.
At the same time, Parish receives a visit from his old friend Colin Broussard, who asks for help with a «simple job» that he has to do for the local Zimbabwean mafia. Gray feels sorry for his unlucky friend, so he agrees to the offer. But then he gets deeper and deeper into the underworld he’s been trying to escape from for so long.
The AMC network, known for its inexplicable desire to produce as many «The Walking Dead» as possible, after «Monsieur Spade» and the recent «The Ones Who Live» continues to produce ambitious projects with expensive visuals, nice acting and nostalgic feelings.
In the sequel to the cult «The Maltese Falcon», the vague narrative was leveled by Clive Owen’s confident performance. The spinoff about Rick Grimes focused on the interaction between the main characters of the original show, whose story did not have a worthy climax. And along with the dubious moments in the plot of «Parish», there is a heartfelt role from Giancarlo Esposito, known not least for another AMC hit — «Breaking Bad» (and its spinoff «Better Call Saul»).
However, it’s better not to expect a Walter White or Jesse Pinkman-level story here, because «Parish» is completely unable to refresh the crime drama genre or surprise in any way. Which doesn’t mean that it’s not worth watching.
Despite its clearly visible secondary nature, this is a tightly woven and tense story, in which Esposito’s desperate look evokes more response than his character’s ability to hold the wheel at high speeds.
And the latter factor is given criminally little attention — in its spirit, this is not an action-dubolomo «The Transporter», but rather a gloomy «Collateral» with the same unlucky driver in trouble. However, with very, huge reservations (after all, the local television product is clearly incomparable to the outstanding neo-noir thriller from Michael Mann).
As for the secondary characters, the series has all the features of typical crime stories: a long-suffering hero with a difficult past that catches up with him, a great tragedy and a desire for revenge, an innocent family that needs to be protected (here, somewhere in the world, Dominic Toretto shed a tear), and even scenes with a quest to get rid of a corpse.
The protagonist’s family is a pure plot device, so the dialogues involving his wife and daughter could have been easily cut in the editing room. And instead of the main villain, there are several scoundrels at once, which is why there is no accentuated antagonism.
The first three episodes, which is almost half of the season, seem to be loose. The events are not very dynamic, and there are few tense moments or even more action. The scene of the attempted murder in the second episode looks interesting, but the next one again brings down the pace with a sluggish narration. Starting from the fourth episode, the series shows its best, in particular, the stakes, and with them the level of tension increases significantly, so it’s hard to tear yourself away from the screen.
All this action is diluted with sporadic action scenes (the series opens with a dynamic chase afterburner ), the usual mini-cliffhangers at the end of each episode, and the theme of African migrants, which is obviously present given that one of the show’s authors, Sunu Gonera, is a native of Zimbabwe.
Giancarlo Esposito finally got a good lead role and demonstrated all fifty shades of Gray, so that those around him did not look so convincing. It will be very interesting to see the actor in the future «Megalopolis» by Francis Ford Coppola.
As a result, the viewer is presented with a fairly standard crime story with no ambitions for eternity, which leaves room for a second season. Despite the lack of a fresh take on the genre, the local showdowns seem fascinating enough to keep us watching for a sequel. If it happens, of course.
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