City on a Hill

Affleck and Damon - both grown up close to Boston - team up with director Charlie McLean on a series about their old hometown. Starring the grim Boston of the nineties, rampant crime, outright racism and headquarters filled to the brim with corrupt cops, a comparison with The Wire is easy. I too - in all my enthusiasm - was guilty of this prior to the first episode, but was soon confronted with the facts. Despite the similarities, City On A Hill cannot compete with perhaps the best series ever to come out of the sleeve of HBO. It was also a bit of wish against better judgment. Can happen. For me, City On A Hill is a bit like the work of Damien Hirst and Coldplay, too artificial. You can see that a lot of time and energy has been put into it, but somehow I don't feel it. It's a bit soulless. A trick. Affleck & co. have collected everything that usually makes a good series, then doused it with the catchy greatest hits from the nineties, but it just isn't enough. The series does not grab you. It lacks the depth needed to turn it into a really good series. It also doesn't help that Kevin Bacon is almost a caricature of a corrupt FBI agent and that the characters of his fellow players develop even more moderately than Clarence Seedorf's coaching career. Maybe my bar was too high and I just had unrealistic expectations of the latest from Showtime, but City On A Hill is one of the setbacks of this television year for me. Not really bad, but a disappointment nonetheless.