Meet Your New Action-Show Obsession: ‘Quarry’
If you were a fan of Cinemax’s Banshee or FX’s Justified, or just looking for a show with a lot of action, remember this name: Quarry. This new Cinemax series, premiering Sept. 9, is a lean, mean production to look forward to.
It stars Logan Marshall-Green (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Mac Conway, also known as Quarry, a Vietnam vet who’s come home for love and finds trouble. Set in the early 1970s, Quarry is a baleful fighting machine with a sentimental fondness for Otis Redding’s lone-wolf soul music. At the start of the series, he returns from two tours of duty with his pal, Arthur (The Wire’s Jamie Hector), and makes a beeline for his wife, Joni (Jodi Balfour), about whom he is crazy. But pretty soon, Quarry finds it tough to find work, the marriage is strained, and he’s ripe for a pitch from a man who calls himself the Broker (Peter Mullan), a smirky businessman who hires guys with weapons skills to do freelance hits — hired killings. After a series of incidents I will not spoil here, Quarry goes over to the Broker’s side and becomes a deadly assassin.
The trick in a show like this is to make us root for a guy who kills for money. Quarry has a few things going for it in this regard. Marshall-Green is a very likable performer: He plays Quarry neither for laughs nor for grimness. Instead, he’s a soulful brooder with a poignant air. And Quarry’s showrunner is producer-director Greg Yaitanes, who was also a central force behind Banshee, and if you aren’t an admirer of that superb shoot-’em-up, stop reading this and go watch every season of it immediately.
As I said, Quarry doesn’t premiere until September, but here’s how you can increase your Quarry knowledge before the show begins. Quarry is based on a series of graphic novels written by Max Allan Collins (The Road to Perdition) that have recently been reissued by the first-rate crime-fiction publisher Hard Case Crime. As always, Hard Case does its pulp fiction proud: Start your reading with Quarry, originally titled The Broker in 1976 and reissued by Hard Case with a cool retro-pulp cover drawn by Robert McGinnis. Then follow it up with the second book in the series, Quarry’s List. If you get hooked, there are a lot more books in the series.
I’ve only seen the pilot of Quarry, directed by Yaitanes, and it’s very good indeed. I’m looking forward to checking out more of the series’ eight-episode first season. Set a reminder for Quarry.
Quarry debuts Sept. 9 on Cinemax.
