'The Lowdown' review: Ethan Hawke's FX series is loopy, with lots of heart

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) runs a rare-book store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but is otherwise a citizen journalist, or self-described "truthstorian." His most recent exposé looked into the mysterious death of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), brother of Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Donald Washberg (Kyle MacLachlan). What did Donald know and when did he know it? And how about that menacing ex-con skinhead Allen (Scott Shepherd), who seems to hang around the Washberg construction business all the time? When Lee starts digging deeper, a mysterious man named Marty (Keith David) starts to tail him. Lee, meanwhile, gets an assist from unexpected quarters — family member Betty Jo Washberg (Jeanne Tripplehorn), his own tween daughter, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and an old friend (Peter Dinklage).

Sterlin Harjo of the acclaimed FX series "Reservation Dogs" created this eight-parter.

MY SAY Hawke has appeared in about 100 films (and a couple of TV series) since the mid-1990s, including several Richard Linklater classics ("Boyhood," the "Before" trilogy), but connoisseurs of the actor don't have far to look for the specific flavor he brings to Lee Raybon. That wild hair. That scraggly beard. That self-righteousness. That wounded pride. That intensity. John Brown from 2020's "The Good Lord Bird" seems about right — or "Goodnight" Robicheaux from 2016's "The Magnificent Seven."

Raybon is also a high plains drifter but rarely drifts beyond the Tulsa city limits because he's too busy being a "truthstorian." He tried marriage once — didn't work, of course — but got a daughter out of the arrangement who threatens to become just like him. Poor girl: No one really wants to become Lee, while most people work extra hard just to get away from him.

As usual, Hawke has created a rich character, or at least a quirky one, with a willingness to collect life's downtrodden because life has treaded so hard on him. Most of all, Raybon is fun company, while those characters who gather around him like barflies are as well — a pair of "bodyguards," a private eye, a not-exactly-grieving widow. When people aren't getting killed — like "Fargo," the violence in "Lowdown" tends to arrive when least expected — there's a real antic quality to all of them.

And, at times, there's a little too much of an antic quality to "The Lowdown" as well. Oddballs proliferate, then disappear, while that compelling "Tulsa noir" atmosphere tends to dissipate with them. There's something evil, or at least dangerous, out there on the Oklahoma plains, except Raybon's too busy chasing down half-baked leads to figure out what. A writer or private eye himself? He's not too clear on that distinction either, although you never once see him in front of a computer screen, or at least a beat-up typewriter with a few missing keys.

"The Lowdown" is loopy, with lots of heart, but best when it slows down. In those rare moments when it does, a little bit of country-and-western soul pokes on through. Raybon's straight out of a Hank Williams song — someone's done him wrong, cheatin' hearts were involved, trucks 'n whiskey too. Born in the wrong century, this high-plains, hard-living, good 'ol boy has a ferocious dedication to truth, justice and righting wrongs in a city which witnessed its own particular evil 104 years ago — the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.

Is this the taproot of that dedication? Is this the injustice he knows he can never set right?

Maybe, maybe not. Over the first five episodes (those made available for review) we never really find out.

BOTTOM LINE Another fine Hawke performance — and entertaining series — but the character he's created never quite gets a backstory, at least over the first five episodes.