Sheriff Walt Longmire is a widower grieving the loss of his wife. His house is full of empty beer cans, and his grown daughter has lost patience with him — a year after his wife's death he won't scatter the ashes, and doesn't seem able to move on.
Longmire's got a young, impatient deputy working under him who thinks Longmire's job ought to be his. But Longmire's still the best detective in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming, with the sharpened instincts that come with being a veteran lawman.
And then there are the boots — lots of shots of the boots. A visual metaphor of Longmire's determination to walk through the pain.
A&E's
Longmire — the new series based on Craig Johnson's novels about a cowboy sheriff — premieres Sunday, June 3 at 10 p.m. ET. This western feels new. It's modern, with six-shooters and cell phones. And it's interesting to see western landscapes and lifestyles as they are today, and not in historical recreation.
The highlight of the series, though, is its star, Robert Taylor (
The Matrix), an Australian actor who hasn't a trace of his native accent, and inhabits the hangdog Longmire character so thoroughly he singlehandedly carries the show. With his weathered features and inner storm, he's that interesting to watch.
And that's a good thing because the premiere episode, a mystery that starts with a dead stranger shot through the chest and found lying face down in the snow, is perhaps standard fare. And it's unraveled by some steady, standard detective work. But that's maybe a plus these days, since it's without the outlandish lab and technology antics we've become accustomed to on procedural shows like
CSI. Longmire doesn't need fancy forensics — he knows that a rifle's been fired recently by the smell of the barrel.
As straightforward as the story is, the Longmire character is equally tangible in his dry wit, his earnestness and his demons. He's a plain-spoken, straight-talking, grizzled veteran riding the Wyoming highways and doing his job. Part of the long story arc is Longmire's struggle to keep his job. He's got a wet-behind-the-ears deputy, Branch Connolly (Bailey Chase) who thinks Longmire is washed up and is running against him in the next election.
There's also a strong supporting cast with Katee Sackhoff (
Battlestar Galactica) as Deputy Vic Moretti, a city emigre new to the wild west and loyal to Sheriff Longmire, and Lou Diamond Phillips (
Numb3rs) as Longmire's longtime friend and owner of the local bar, "The Red Pony."
The deep, lonesome thorn here is Longmire's struggle while saddled by the past that still burns fresh in him, unresolved. It's well-written all over Taylor's face — and is something all of us can probably relate to.
When the widow of the victim in the pilot asks Longmire, "Does it ever stop hurting?", he says quietly, "Not really. I guess the only way it could ever stop hurting is that if maybe we could forget about them. That's the thing. I don't want to forget anything."