The streaming game isn't just down to who you can lure in to front up your new series, but at the same time, it never hurts when one of the biggest and best streaming services on the market nabs an A-lister for a project. Disney+ last week provided the perfect case in point, in partnership with FX and Hulu: a trailer for its new series The Lowdown, which has Ethan Hawke in the lead role, looking like he's having a whale of a time.
The show will start on Disney+ (here in the UK) on 24 September, and in the US you'll be able to catch it in a few places depending on what memberships you have access to. It looks like a really fun and twisty mystery series, with Hawke at its heart as a unique character who might be more than a little magnetic to watch.
Hawke plays Lee Raybon, a local nut in Tulsa who has a penchant for uncovering crazy stories and conspiracies – with a somewhat unclear record as to whether those stories end up being true. He tries to place them in local papers with mixed success, and seems to be a magnet for trouble, whether in the form of the disgruntled subjects of his stories or full-on criminals.
He starts to suspect he's on to something big, though, when one of his pieces about a powerful local family seems to have consequences – the death of one of that family (Tim Blake Nelson). He leaves Lee a tranche of documents to go through, it would seem, and they pull him further into the story (to the likely detriment of his teenage daughter, who might be the more responsible half of their relationship).
There are some really fun names involved in the project aside from just Hawke (who's a blockbuster on his own). There's a role for Peter Dinklage as one of Lee's associates, and Twin Peaks' Kyle MacLachlan as another member of that powerful family (possibly an adversary, therefore).
Plus, crucially for discerning TV fans, the show has been created, executive produced, written, and directed by Sterlin Harjo, who did the same swathe of roles for the widely-acclaimed Reservation Dogs. That makes this a highly-awaited follow-up that could become a cult hit even if it doesn't break out into the mainstream, which it could!
