Banshee (TV series)

Premise

A man is released from prison after serving 15 years for planning to keep $15 million in diamonds that he was stealing on behalf of his employer, a Ukrainian mob boss named Rabbit. His former lover and accomplice, Rabbit’s daughter Anastasia, took off with the diamonds. Rabbit is after him because he thinks the man will lead him to his daughter and the diamonds. The man flees to the small fictional, Pennsylvanian town of Banshee, where Anastasia has been living under the alias of Carrie Hopewell, the wife of the DA with two children. Lucas Hood, the new sheriff, arrives in town and is immediately killed when he intervenes in a dispute between local criminals and a bar owner. The man takes Hood’s identity and has to impersonate the sheriff and deal with ex-Amish crime lord Kai Proctor, sort things out with "Carrie" and get his share of the diamonds while evading Rabbit.

Season 1 focuses on Hood's attempts to restore his relationship with Carrie under the looming threat of Rabbit finding them. Hood completely disregards the law while clashing with Proctor and pursuing his often criminal activities, alienating his deputies. Rabbit eventually tracks him down and Hood surrenders to spare Carrie. Carrie leads some criminal accomplices and the deputies in a raid to free Hood and shoots Rabbit.

Season 2 deals with tribal chief Alex Longshadow's attempt to build a casino on the reservation which places Sheriff Hood in the middle of a violent struggle between Longshadow and Proctor. Carrie must face up to her past when she is imprisoned for her part in the raid against her father. With Carrie trying to fix her marriage, Hood enters into a relationship with his deputy Siobhan. He must deal with the real Hood's son when he comes to Banshee looking for his father. Hood and Carrie are forced to track down and confront Rabbit and settle things once and for all when they learn he survived being shot.

Production

Banshee is part of Cinemax's attempt to expand its original programming content, and it joins Strike Back (co-produced with BSkyB) and Steve Kronish's Sandbox. Banshee premiered on January 11, 2013. The show was first revealed in August 2011, when it was announced that Alan Ball would produce the crime drama. Ball helped develop the project alongside creators Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler. Banshee was originally set up at Cinemax owner HBO, but moved to Cinemax when it was decided to increase original programming on that network. By August, Cinemax was finalizing casting and financial details with the intention of filming in Spring 2012 in North Carolina. In January 2012, Cinemax ordered ten episodes for the show's first season, with the first episode being directed by Greg Yaitanes. In March 2012, Servitto, Dunn and Owens were cast as, respectively, Brock Lotus, Siobhan Kelly, and Mayor Dan Kendall. Later that month, Starr was cast as lead character Lucas Hood, alongside Grosse as deputy Emmett Yawners, Thomsen as Kai Proctor, Lee as Job, and Milicevic as Carrie Hopewell. Simmons was cast in April as Proctor's niece, Rebecca Bowman, an Amish girl who lives a rebellious double life, and in August 2012, Odette Annable was cast in the recurring role of Nola Longshadow, a Native American assassin. Tropper, Schickler, Ball, Yaitanes and Peter Macdissi serve as executive producers.

During the first day of shooting on the series, Starr suffered a facial injury when stunt fight choreography went wrong, splitting his lip open. He continued to film for six hours to complete the scene before going to the hospital to receive six stitches. The injury required digital removal for all scenes set before the fight but filmed after the stunt, resulting in lengthy post-production on the first episode. Some of the many fight scenes on the show can take up to 25 hours to film. Yaitanes cited Jason Statham-starring action films, and John Carpenter films Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and They Live (1988) as inspiration for the fights and violence in Banshee. Marcus Young serves as the series' fight choreographer.

On January 29, 2013 Cinemax renewed Banshee for a 10-episode second season which premiered on January 10, 2014. The season's opening action set piece featuring Milicevic, Starr, and Lee, performing a high-speed heist, was filmed across five miles of closed highway. Tropper originally wrote the scene for the show's accompanying graphic novel, Banshee Origins which follows the trio sixteen years earlier, but he decided that it would be an interesting live action stunt. The season finale's shoot out was filmed inside a church in Harlem, New York. The scene was shot over three days.

After three episodes of the second season had aired, Banshee was renewed for third season, which premiered on January 9, 2015.

For the first three seasons, filming took place in the Mooresville, North Carolina area. Because North Carolina's legislature chose not to continue tax credits for filming movies and TV series, the show moved to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, centering in the suburb of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has continued to offer tax incentives.

Reception

After the first season of Banshee received a 61% score on Rotten Tomatoes, an average rating of 5.9/10, sampled from 23 reviews, later seasons received much better scores, ranging from 90–100%. It holds a 61/100 score on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Wall Street Journal critic Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote, "Its smartness comes shining through despite the claptrap (none worse than the parade of sex scenes, soft-porn variety, whose noisiness is exceeded only by their unconvincingness); its story, littered with intriguingly repellent characters, like Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen), local evil tycoon, grows ever more enticing". The San Francisco Chronicle said about Banshee, "It has a solid pedigree. It's also part of Cinemax's effort to expand its original programming. That effort pays off with Banshee".

Banshee has also had less favorable reviews. A Boston Herald critic described the series as: "A slow-pokey drama punctuated by shocking violence and sex".

Ratings

Season one of Banshee drew Cinemax's highest ever ratings for an original series, averaging 433,000 viewers per episode and 727,000 in the 7 days after each episode was released. The season finale drew 455,000 viewers during its initial screening and 655,000 during its repeat, the largest audience ever, at the time, for a Cinemax original series, and the third-highest ratings achieved by Banshee at that point.

The second season exceeded the first's successes. The season's fifth episode, "The Truth about Unicorns", set a series record with 591,000 viewers during its original airing. The season finale also set a new record, with 733,000 viewers, and a total of 968,000 for the evening including repeat showings.

Accolades

Armen V. Kevorkian won the award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects at the 65th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Other media

A soundtrack album, Banshee – Music from the Cinemax Original Series, was released on CD and digital download on February 11, 2014. The album features 17 songs from the show's first two seasons, including the main theme by Methodic Doubt, and tracks by artists including Nico Vega, Ivy Levan, The Growl, Anders Osborne, Fred Eaglesmith, and Martin Harley.