If You’re Looking for a Gritty, New Crime Drama, ‘Quarry’ Rocks

If you’ve haven’t watched a Cinemax original series since the Skinamax days, you’re missing out, because their new show Quarry is a keeper.

“You’re immediately drawn into the love so obvious between man and wife, which is the glue that keeps not just their marriage together, but also the show compelling. This young couple in love gets into some shit together, and that tenuous love is the only thing keeping Quarry’s heart from breaking bad.”

Not that Quarry doesn’t have its fair share of skin, as relative newcomers Logan Marshall-Green and Jodi Balfour smolder in the southern heat with a sultriness not seen since William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Or perhaps that’s just the power of a perfect mustache, which Logan most definitely dons. And Balfour’s bra-burning, fight-the-power hippyness is seductively hypnotizing as well. But while that attraction may have initially drew me in, the dark, gritty, underworld story set against the right and true lightness of their love, keeps me coming back for more.

Based on the novels of Max Allan Collins, Quarry takes place in 1972, when disgruntled and perhaps soon-to-be-disbarred Marine Mac Conway (Marshall-Green) returns home to Memphis after two tours in Vietnam. When Mac and his hometown friend and platoon mate, Arthur, return home, they are greeted by angry picketers protesting their involvement in a Vietnamese village massacre. Fortunately, Mac comes home to the love of a good woman, Joni (Balfour).

You’re immediately drawn into the love so obvious between man and wife, which is the glue that keeps not just their marriage together, but also the show compelling. This young couple in love gets into some shit together, and that tenuous love is the only thing keeping Quarry’s heart from breaking bad.

See, not everyone is as happy to see Mac as Joni seems to be, particularly his family or any potential employers. Except one: a mysterious man, the Broker, as played by Peter Mullan (a character actor who you’ll definitely recognize, from Braveheart, Trainspotting, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, among others). We soon learn the Broker knows that Mac possesses certain skills, which would be helpful in his line of work; he offers Mac $30K to kill a man. But Mac turns him down.

But later, Mac finds out that the Broker offered the same deal to Arthur, who took the job. So Mac agrees to be his look-out on the assignment. Well, I don’t want to spoil the pilot for you, which you can watch below (warning: skin!), but let’s just say that assignment doesn’t go very well. Mac ends up having to work off Arthur’s debt to the Broker, who nicknames Mac “Quarry,” for not very obvious reasons. So Quarry becomes a paid assassin working in the Memphis underworld, full of lunatics both cunning and crazy. And his first assignment is connected to Joni!

Add all that intrigue and steam, throw in the social relevance of placing the story in the year 1972 — another polarizing time, but with American Muscle and sweet soul music — and you’ve got yourself some quality entertainment. Give it a whirl.