Max’s new period crime thriller Duster makes for a binge-worthy dive into the 1970s headlined by Josh Holloway’s fabulous hair and evergreen charm behind the wheel.
There’s a lot of things to appreciate in Max’s new original crime thriller, Duster. Set in the 1970s Southwest, the show features a vintage aesthetic that’s vividly reminiscent of classics like Starsky & Hutch. But the show’s aim for nostalgia lies not only in its cinematography and production design—it also shows in its casting, with 2000s TV staple Josh Holloway, best known for his portrayal of the complicated yet charming Sawyer in Lost, headlining the new series. Another source of television nostalgia in Duster is Greg Grunberg, a familiar face from the late 1990s through much of the 2000s. He played the inventive and aspiring entrepreneur Sean in Felicity, and later portrayed police officer Matt Parkman in Heroes.
Who created Duster?
Created by J. J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan, Duster is in the hands of TV pros—Abrams has been creating hits since the ‘90s, with titles like Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe— not to mention his work in the Star Wars films The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. Morgan, meanwhile, earned writing credits on hit shows like Parenthood and Shameless before stepping into a producing role on series like Turn: Washington’s Spies and Into the Badlands. All of this ultimately led to a deal with Warner Bros. Television Group, with Duster being her first project with the media giant.
What is Duster about?
Duster opens up with Nina Hayes, FBI’s first Black woman agent, played by Rachel Hilson (The Good Wife, This Is Us), discussing her request to be reassigned to Phoenix, Arizona. Apparently, there’s a local mobster who’s trafficking weapons and drugs that the FBI can’t touch yet due to lack of incriminating evidence. The mobster is Ezra Saxton, played by Keith David (Nope, American Fiction).
His criminal empire has been the subject of investigation for quite awhile, but so far nothing solid has come up. Nina, fresh out of Quantico, promises to be the breakthrough the case needs. The Bureau, uninterested in the extent of her capacities, generally dismissing her for being young, Black, and a woman, “no one’s clamoring for an agent like you”, says one of her superiors, eventually agrees to her request. It’s not because they were moved by her display of fierce determination; it’s simply because they’re down a man in Phoenix, and now there’s nobody else—except the new FBI graduate, whose desire to end Saxton is actually driven by personal vengeance.
In Arizona, we’re introduced to Duster’s other protagonist, Jim Ellis (Holloway). He’s Saxton’s designated driver for important “errands,” driving—you guessed it—a classic 1970s cherry-red muscle car: the very same car that inspired the show’s title. He’s on the job, but you can presume it’s not very dangerous since his “niece” Luna is with him. It turns out he’s transporting a human heart for his boss’ son’s surgery, which got a bit delayed when some thugs saw him receiving the “package” at a drive thru.
He handled them with the driving prowess of a man who’s really good at his job, delivering the organ on time despite his run-in with two men who clearly don’t like him. But hey, this scene also implants the fact that even with a human heart cargo sitting in his car and a little girl entrusted to him by her mother, Jim manages to get it done.
Back to Nina: she arrives in Phoenix and is greeted by Awan Bitsui (Asivak Koostachin), a Native American agent who’s often sidelined by his colleagues for the same reasons Nina isn’t taken seriously in the workplace. Their professional partnership is easy to root for, especially in the face of the blatant dismissal they face from other agents. Phoenix’s Squad Supervisor Nathan Abbott (Grunberg) is one of the few who seems supportive. “Dawn of a new era,” he quips after seeing Nina step into the office.
Nina, being the fierce agent that she is, and let’s not forget, the Saxton case is also personal for her for reasons later to be disclosed, instantly gets things rolling. Advised to pursue red tape activities—property records, bank accounts, purchase orders—to strengthen a federal case that hasn’t seen progress in the past year, Nina decides to take a different route: Jim Ellis. She thought that if she could make Jim her CI, dismantling Saxton’s empire would be more feasible.
Jim and Luna come up during the initial investigation following the crash that hospitalised the men who were chasing them. At first, Nina uses Luna as leverage to threaten Jim, but that doesn’t stick. While he doesn’t show it, Jim is rattled but has no intentions of being a snitch. It’s only when Nina discovers that Jim’s late brother Joe, died in a vehicle explosion, that she finds the connection and angle she needs to bring Jim into the fold. Bringing out the big guns, Nina confesses that her late father used to work for Saxton—until he wanted out and died the same way Jim’s brother did.
This revelation casts doubt on the circumstances surrounding Joe’s death and is more than enough to make Jim consider switching sides—which he does at the end of the episode. However, a cop working for Saxton witnesses the entire exchange, raising the stakes for everyone involved and also kind of giving us The Departed and/or Internal Affairs vibe while donning period film aesthetics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We’ll see how all of this plays out in the upcoming episodes of Duster.
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Is Duster worth watching?
Duster, with all its crime-thriller formulas and underlying drama, feels somewhat standard—but in its own charming way. Basically, you know a show is worth watching if you can get through the entire episode without mentally commenting on how ludicrous certain scenes or lines are. Duster’s debut episode managed to play on my screen without interruption.
The stage is already set—you know which characters you’ll care about as the story progresses, and you have a sense of how things might wrap up as Jim dangerously decides to play for both teams. However, that doesn’t mean you’ve got everything figured out—especially not from the get-go. Duster may be one of those shows that lays all its cards on the table, pretending to be predictable, only to pull a fast one and catch us by surprise. That right there—that’s good TV, basic plot or not.
Duster streams with a new episode on Max or Max through Foxtel every Friday with its finale scheduled to air on 4 July.
