ShareThisDark and brooding, the Canadian import "Durham County" is unlike any crime show on American television. It's not a procedural, like "CSI," and has more in common with serialized American series, evincing the moodiness of "Twin Peaks" and the frigidity of "Damages." It's a solid psychological thriller intended for viewers unafraid of haunting drama.
Most of all, it's dark, not the way the show is lit, but in its examinations of the characters' psychological makeup. That's even more true in the six-episode second season that launches with two back-to-back installments Sunday beginning at 9 p.m. EST on Ion Television.
If you missed the first season, here's what you need to know to catch up:
-- Homicide detective Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon, "Flashpoint") moved back to the town where he grew up and faced off with former high-school rival Ray Prager (Justin Louis), who grew up to be a murderer and abusive husband.
-- Ray killed a teacher who was a mentor to his son, Ray Jr. (Greyston Holt). The teacher also had a relationship with Mike, who feared his wife, Audrey (Helene Joy), would die from her cancer.
-- Mike's daughter, Sadie (Laurence Leboeuf), romanced Ray Jr. before Ray Sr. threatened her at gunpoint before she shot him in the season finale.
Season two picks up the threads of these stories but also begins a new plot. (As long as you know the above character-relationship information, you shouldn't be lost.)
An unspecified amount of time has passed since the first season, maybe a year or more judging by how tall Ray Jr. has grown. In that time, Mike and Audrey have separated and Sadie suffers from the trauma of her encounter with Ray Sr. (now played by Romano Orzari), who is jailed and awaiting trial. He's also disfigured by burns to his face suffered in a fire, a clever cheat to disguise the re-casting.
The new story involves the death of a baby, possibly at the hands of the child's homeless mother, who finds shelter as a flea-market squatter.
Mike, newly promoted since the Prager case, immediately assumes the junkie mother is responsible for the baby's death. Forensic psychiatrist Pen Verrity (Michelle Forbes) backs Mike's analysis. But neither one is seeing beyond their own damaged worlds.
Mike is worried about Sadie and whether Prager raped her while he held her at gunpoint, projecting his own inadequacies as a parent onto the mother of the dead child. Pen is grieving the death of her daughter, who drowned in a backyard swimming pool, so she may be projecting, too. Police ruled the drowning accidental but detective Tom Bykovski (Patrick Labbe), the closest "Durham County" gets to a true good-guy hero, has his doubts.
As more revelations about Pen trickle out, it becomes clear that Mike's willingness to embrace her theory (and her body) are bad choices for himself and his family.
Sunday's episodes, written by show runner Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, offer disturbing imagery -- some scenes that are actually happening, some that are just in Pen's disturbed imagination.
As Pen, Forbes adds to her repertoire of characters who seem well-meaning at first but reveal themselves to be nut-job manipulators. Most recently Forbes played the chaos-creating Maryann on "True Blood" and before that she murdered her own crew members on "Battlestar Galactica." Pen is more decisive in her drive to get what she wants and more skilled at covering her true motivations.
Dillon, who is best known for his starring role in CBS's "Flashpoint," makes a strong impression as a morally ambiguous cop who tries to do the right thing but is not averse to doing wrong to achieve his goals. Sweeney is also a bit of a brute with rage issues, making him unpredictable and adding to the always-impending sense of mayhem that runs through "Durham County."
A third season of the series began production this fall in Montreal. Ion has not yet decided whether it will air the third season.
(Contact TV editor Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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