‘The Lowdown’ Review: Ethan Hawke Anchors a Southern Noir With Heart and Humor

One of the best series of the past few years is also among the least watched or talked about, at least outside the United States. I’m referring to Reservation Dogs, that wonderful blend of surreal dramedy and heartfelt portrait of life inside an Indigenous reservation in Oklahoma, told through the eyes of a group of teenage friends. Sterlin Harjo, its creator, grew up in places like that and knows how to infuse that world —and its people— with a warmth and a slightly eccentric personality. That same sensibility shows up again in The Lowdown, a series that, in other hands, could’ve easily turned into a straight small-town noir homage (Jim Thompson is a crucial touchstone here), but which Harjo turns into something far richer.

The show, powered almost entirely by Ethan Hawke’s extraordinary performance, follows Lee Raybon, a reporter for a tiny local paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who also owns a small independent bookstore —the kind that avoids bestsellers and survives on old editions and staff recommendations. Lee’s life mission is to uncover the hidden truths buried beneath the town’s official history; he calls himself a truthstorian. What’s that supposed to mean? He explains it like this: “I read stuff, I look into stuff, I drive around and find stuff. Then I write about all that stuff. Some people care, some people don’t. I’m always broke, but let’s just say I’m obsessed with the truth.” And that obsession is exactly what keeps getting him into trouble.

Across the eight funny, sharp, and occasionally intense episodes of The Lowdown, Lee plunges into one of those cases where common sense would suggest staying away. But he can’t help himself, and —like any good noir anti-hero, in this case a sweaty, Southern one— he spends most of the season bruised, tied up, threatened, or otherwise battered. The series is practically a catalog of scars acquired during investigations that —as the genre dictates— start heading one way and end up somewhere completely different.

To simplify a plot full of twists, Lee becomes suspicious of the sudden suicide of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), brother of Donald (played by none other than Kyle “Agent Cooper” MacLachlan), a powerful businessman and candidate for governor. The death comes right after one of Lee’s articles exposed shady dealings within the family, and he’s not buying the official story —especially since Dale seemed to be the “black sheep,” the only one not mixed up in the family’s dirt.

That’s the thread Lee begins to pull, and his head pays the price throughout the episodes. The show bounces between the evolving investigation —involving Dale’s widow, Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), a handful of local big shots (played by Tracy Letts, Scott Shepherd, and others), and Donald’s security chief (the great Keith David)— and Lee’s chaotic personal life. Predictably, he’s a disaster in that area too: a complicated dynamic with his recent ex (Kaniehtiio Horn), and very little time for his precocious daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who inevitably finds her way into his life and even into the case.

And while the plot eventually exposes the usual unholy marriage between political and economic power —with echoes of many current issues— The Lowdown isn’t a message-driven police procedural. It’s a show to savor in the details: in the richness of the dialogue, the surprising secondary characters (Lee’s security detail, a bunch of “Indian mafia” guys, steal every scene they’re in), and in the way its peculiar protagonist keeps sinking deeper into a crusade where he has everything to lose and very little to gain. Even when he wins.

The series is also a musical delight: Harjo and his team rediscover mostly unknown ’70s artists and pair them with contemporary musicians, all tied to the region’s alt-country tradition. That sense of place, those philosophical or literary detours that seem unrelated —at first glance— to the plot, are what make The Lowdown more than the sum of its parts. In fact, when the police-noir conflicts resolve in a more subdued way than expected, it becomes clear that what mattered was never the case itself, but the way the characters —especially Lee— react to each shift in their lives and circumstances.

Front and center is Hawke. The Boyhood actor —who has barely done any television— wrings every last drop out of a role that feels custom-built for him. His gently scruffy charm, his self-mocking humor, and his stubborn habit of fighting for the right causes even as his own life spins out of control give the show its unmistakable flavor. Even the character’s musical taste seems tailored to Hawke’s own. But behind him is Harjo, a filmmaker growing more assured with every project —someone who knows that the surest way into genre is to ground it in a real place, a world he understands down to the smallest detail. The crime plot may check the usual boxes, but the show’s real richness lies in the truth that surrounds it and cuts through it. In that sense, Harjo is a «truthstorian» too.