Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is a “truthstorian”. How to explain that proudly self-applied title? A historian, but also an investigative journalist with an inherent distrust of mainstream narratives? A maker of trouble for trouble’s sake? Or one of those fantasists whose home contains a huge mood board (current mood? Paranoid!) covered with photos of suspects and newspaper clippings and various strands of a conspiracy connected by pieces of string? Raybon actually has one of those. “I’m a very visual thinker,” he says. His scathing former business partner Wendell (Peter Dinklage) sees it differently: “It’s like you read one Oklahoma history book and then made a junior high collage out of it.”
This exchange is typical of the alacrity with which The Lowdown cheerfully undercuts itself. Sterlin Harjo’s Tulsa noir is brilliantly elusive in tone. It allows Raybon, its nominal hero, precious little dignity. Raybon is, in many ways, a ridiculous man. His marriage is in ruins. He puts his sweet, resourceful daughter Francis in danger by mixing business and parenting. He’s one of the least physically imposing renegades you’ll ever meet (“How does an adult with a gun get put in the trunk of a car?” wonders his associate Cyrus at one point). He isn’t Woodward or Bernstein, he’s Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski with a sympathetic editor and a political agenda.
The Lowdown is frequently very funny; working as both a genre piece (in which the genre in question is fondly spoofed) and as a character study (which follows a similar trajectory of amiable mockery). And yet, as with Harjo’s previous show Reservation Dogs, there’s something profoundly serious going on here too. The mystery at the drama’s heart involves the powerful Washberg family whose wayward offspring Dale has taken his own life – or anyway, that’s their story. It seems likely that he has died – at least indirectly – as a result of an article Raybon has written. So there’s a follow-up to be explored about the circumstances of Dale’s death but also potentially about the older Washberg, Donald’s predatory designs on Indigenous American land and Black-owned businesses in the area.
This is Harjo’s subtext. Tulsa is a city with a dark history. The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 – in which up to 300 Black citizens were murdered by white supremacists – is a barely acknowledged but omnipresent undertone. The distinct aroma of white saviour surrounds Raybon at all times. “White men that care,” mutters Cyrus. “The saddest of the bunch.” Harjo, meanwhile, is an Oklahoma native in the most fundamental sense. He’s a citizen of the Indigenous American people, the Seminole nation of Oklahoma. Reservation Dogs was about a beleaguered Indigenous community and how it managed to support itself in the face of white hostility – and arguably worse still, indifference. The Lowdown isn’t even nearly a follow-up in terms of subject matter but it could be regarded as a companion piece – the same territory and power structures, viewed from a different angle. Raybon’s good intentions are weighed down by their historical context.
But even if Raybon is constantly failing to outrun the past, there is still real generosity in Harjo’s characterisation. Raybon is a driven man at least partly because the most important thing is to keep trying. Harjo specialises in earnest, ardent goofballs. People who are on the side of the angels but who remain endearingly daft. People who hold firm to their principles and take themselves extremely seriously. Like the idealistic, charming teens in Reservation Dogs, Raybon will never let his own absurdity cause him to take his eyes off the prize.
The fact that Raybon doesn’t really understand what that prize might be is a big part of the fun. What unfolds is an all-American wild goose chase, populated by an ensemble of memorable picaresques. The supporting performances are uniformly superb – from Keith David’s blunt gumshoe Marty to Kyle MacLachlan’s oily Donald, everyone brings something sweet or sinister, funny or peculiar to the table. Meanwhile, Raybon blunders around, stumbling uninvited into private meetings, getting beaten up (repeatedly: he becomes progressively bruised and dishevelled as the series goes on) and drunkenly falling into bed with Donald Washberg’s dissolute ex-wife Betty Jo (the brilliant Jeanne Tripplehorn).
Raybon imagines he is fighting to preserve an idea of progressive America, but he’s hanging on to something in himself too. Eventually, The Lowdown is a poignant and surprisingly personal story, about purpose and ageing and noble failure; about the timeless truth that the journey is more important than the destination. “There’s no cat up in that tree he’s barking at,” suggests his antiquarian book dealer friend Raymond. But even if Raymond is right, Raybon has to keep barking all the same. What else is a Truthstorian to do?
• The Lowdown is on Disney+ now.
