Reservation Dogs Review

Reservation Dogs is a hangout comedy with a wound at the centre, and it manages both at once for three seasons. The four leads are funny and specific and the show never asks them to represent anything larger than themselves, which is exactly how it ends up representing a great deal. Harjo writes the reservation as a place with its own rhythm, jokes and spirits, and the episodes that step away from the main cast to follow an uncle, an aunt or a grandmother are often the best in the series.

The dialogue is loose and real and the deadpan is perfect. What the show is finally about is grief, the friend who died before the story began and what the survivors owe him, and the final season resolves that with a tenderness that few comedies attempt. The cinematography is warm and unhurried. It is faulted only for a middle season that drifts, and for an ending that arrived sooner than its audience wanted.