We have to give Kevin Bacon credit; most of his TV projects have been not only daring, but show him playing less-than-virtuous characters. In his latest series, he plays a bounty hunter who ends up getting killed and working directly for Satan, retrieving demons who escaped Hell.
Opening Shot: As “Spirit in the Sky” plays, a truck drives down a dark road and pulls up at a roadside motel.
The Gist: Hub Halloran (Kevin Bacon) is a bail bondsman, and he’s been hired to bring back a familiar bail skipper. When the fugitive doesn’t come out when he knocks on the motel room door, Hub uses a unique way to flush him out; he puts a hornet’s nest in the air conditioning vent. But when someone runs out, Hub finds it’s the brother of the guy he’s looking for. That’s when he’s hit by a shotgun blast in the back; the guy he’s actually looking for then slashes Hub’s throat.
Hub wakes up inside a wall, with a gaping hole in his neck. He busts out and subdues another Tater (Mike Kaye), hired by the Earle Brothers to burn the motel down, and puts him in the trunk of the car he drove over. He realizes something isn’t quite right when he asks for a cigarette and smoke billows out of his throat when he exhales. On the other end of Hub’s shotgun, Tater tells him that he and the Earles were hired by Lucky Callahan (Damon Herriman), a Boston transplant to Georgia who also now happens to be dating Hub’s ex-wife, singer Maryanne Dice (Jennifer Nettles).
Hub drives the car, with the guy in the trunk, to his office, which is in an old gas station next to the house where his mother Kitty (Beth Grant) lives. When he goes to clean his gaping neck wound, Hub notices that it’s starting to close up. By the next morning, it’s almost completely healed. As he goes after Callahan — who, of course, is shocked that Hub isn’t dead — Maryanne wants him to sign a form that will allow their teenage son Cade (Maxwell Jenkins) to go out on the road with them. In the meantime, Callahan takes off.
Hub goes to a cabin where the Earles and Callahan are playing poker. He knows it’s a trap, and finds a way to leverage the brothers to draw in Callahan. But he’s also shocked when he sees Pastor Ron (Dave Macomber), from his mother’s former church, with the glowing eyes of a demon. In the meantime, a company called Pot O’ Gold keeps calling him to complete a “new employee orientation.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Bondsman, created by Grainger David, is a bit of a cross between Fallout, The Boys and The Sticky.
Our Take: The upshot of what happened to Hub is that, yes, he’s indeed dead, as Midge (Jolene Purdy), a representative from Pot O’ Gold, tells him. Oh, by the way, Pot O’ Gold is actually Hell, and he was sent back to hunt down demons who escaped and are roaming Earth. If he fails any of his missions, he gets extracted back “Down There.” But Satan can also call him back “home” at any time, whether he’s successful or not.
What we enjoyed about The Bondsman is that, like many horror thrillers of this type, it’s not taking itself completely seriously. Bacon is appropriately sardonic as a Hub, a guy who’s probably seen it all, and done just enough to get him that ticket to Hell, despite Kitty’s assertions that he’s a good boy. Even when he finds himself with that huge hole in his neck when he wakes up, he takes a piece of duct tape off the car that rolled up on the motel and wrapped it around his bloody neck. It was gross but wholly appropriate for a character who’s as hardened as Hub is.
While the action scenes where Hub, with the help of Kitty, hunt and kill demons are well-done, we’re more interested in seeing Hub negotiate the idea that his mortal enemy, Calloway, is involved with his Maryanne and Cade. So he’s going to have to show his ex and their son that Calloway isn’t the great guy he seems to be. It’ll also be interesting to go back and see Hub and Maryanne’s history, even if it’s just to see scenes where Bacon and Nettles sing together.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first two episodes, but it’s a very bloody show.
Parting Shot: With a slight smile, Midge tells Hub, “Now you hunt demons. For the Devil.”
Sleeper Star: Jolene Purdy plays Midge as this chipper HR-rep kind of character, even though she’s literally an agent of Satan.
Most Pilot-y Line: It’s amazing how long Tater stayed in the trunk of his car without passing out from lack of oxygen.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Bondsman is mostly bloody and silly, but fun performances by Bacon and Grant make the demon-slaying adventures of Hub Halloran very watchable.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.