Although few shows can compare to the ‘00s crime classics Oz and The Wire, one Taylor Sheridan series does attempt to blend the two epics into a single story across its four seasons. No matter what critics may say about writer/ director Taylor Sheridan, and they’ve said plenty since he emerged as a major force in Hollywood ten years ago with 2016’s Hell or High Water, there is no denying his ambition.
For a lot of creators, the underperformance of numerous shows that updated the tropes of Westerns, like 2011’s Luck and 2004’s Carnivale, would put them off exploring the genre further. Instead, Sheridan took the success of 2010’s Timothy Olpyhant-led Neo-Western Justified as a sign and not only turned 2018’s family saga Yellowstone into a hit, but soon expanded that initial success into a sprawling franchise.
With the prequels 1883 and 1923 and the sequels Marshals and Dutton Ranch, not to mention the planned preequel 1944, Yellowstone soon went from being an unexpected hit to one of the biggest franchises on television. Not content to rest on his laurels, Sheridan then expanded his TV empire with Tulsa King, Lawman: Bass Reeves, Lioness, the upcoming Tulsa King spinoff Frisco King, Landman, and The Madison. However, arguably his most ambitious effort came in the form of the 2021 crime thriller Mayor of Kingstown.
Mayor of Kingstown Blends The Wire’s Ambition With Oz’s Prison Setting
Set in the titular fictional Michigan town, Mayor of Kingstown stars Jeremy Renner as Mike McLusky, heir to an unusual business empire. Kingstown’s primary economic driver is the town’s seven prisons. The McLusky family work as fixers, acting as middle men between prison guards, prisoners, gang members outside the prisons and corrupt local cops. It’s a plot that immediately calls to mind HBO’s crime drama masterpiece The Wire with its ambitious attempt to layer together a Dickensian portrait of a disadvantaged community’s social strata.
However, there’s another, more obvious comparison that will likely have already occurred to aficionados of crime TV while reading that synopsis. Before The Wire, or its predecessor The Corner, HBO released the six-season masterpiece Oz, a brutal, unsparing drama set in a fictional men’s prison. Told through the perspective of various inmates, guards, and correctional officers, Oz was a tense, grim, and brutally brilliant look at the corrupt US criminal justice system.
With an astounding ensemble cast including Ernie Hudson, Harold Perrineau, and JK Simmons, Oz was lauded as a uniquely unsentimental and powerful piece of crime drama upon its original release. Sadly, the series devolved into melodrama with far-fetched plot lines in its later seasons, but the early seasons of Oz were influential enough to help shape later hits like The Sopranos, The Wire, and later dark dramas with criminal protagonists like Breaking Bad and Ozark.
Mayor of Kingstown Struggles With A Classic Taylor Sheridan Problem
On the topic of Oz’s later, regrettably sillier outings, Mayor of Kingstown runs into the same problem as many of Sheridan’s small-screen efforts in the show’s admirable attempt to blend the broad perspective outlook of The Wire with the prison-centric storytelling of Oz. Like Yellowstone and the rest of Sheridan’s TV shows, Mayor of Kingstown’s focus on high-octane action and macho posturing mean that the show never feels as authentic or honest as The Wire or Oz. Despite sharing a prison setting, Mayor of Kingstown has none of Oz’s tragic humanity.
Similarly, where The Wire depicted its antiheroes as deeply flawed, recognizably human characters shaped by their environment, Mayor of Kingstown focuses on brooding, squinting tough guys who walk in slow motion and act as quippy sheriffs of a modern frontier town. Thus, even though Mayor of Kingstown could have been an equal to The Wire or Oz, Sheridan’s show instead feels like it misses the mark entirely.
- Release Date
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November 14, 2021
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Dave Erickson
- Directors
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Stephen Kay, Guy Ferland, Christoph Schrewe, Clark Johnson, Paul Cameron, Tasha Smith, Taylor Sheridan
- Writers
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James Arcega Tinsley