FX’s The Lowdown: Tulsa noir probes power, community and truth

FX’s The Lowdown arrives as a Tulsa noir built around Lee Raybon, a hard-charging anti-corruption investigator whose work tests Tulsa’s political and social fabric and his own limits. The series, created by Sterlin Harjo and Ethan Hawke, gives Hawke a role that blends investigative zeal with a restless, self-doubting humanity.

Set on a block that houses a rare-book shop, a record store, and a 24-hour diner, The Lowdown anchors its mood in a real Oklahoma city Harjo knows well. The catalyst is the death of Dale Washberg, a disfavored scion of a powerful clan; authorities say it was a suicide, but Lee, who recently published an exposé on the Washbergs, suspects foul play tied to a company buying up North Tulsa properties. Dale’s widow, Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), is not as grieving as she appears and is seen with Dale’s brother Donald, a gubernatorial candidate played by Kyle MacLachlan. Lee’s investigations push him to pursue leads across Tulsa, including an undercover foray with white supremacists. The search intensifies when his teenage daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) starts tagging along on some missions.

Two other cast members anchor the series: Keith David’s Marty, a character who delivers a jolt of hard-won practicality with a cutting line in the premiere: There’s nothing worse than a white man who cares. Peter Dinklage appears in a guest arc as an aging ally who provides a cautionary counterpoint to Lee’s zeal. Hawke’s Raybon is described as wiry, tenacious, and eccentric, a self-styled truthstorian who is equal parts scholar and risk-taker, whose commitment to exposing injustice often collides with a mounting personal toll.

Lee’s clashes with the powerful are punctuated by escalating violence, including episodes where he is beaten and nearly murdered. The action leans into a cartoonish brutality that heightens the stakes while allowing room for Hawke’s intense, funny, and oddball readings. The show’s tone is fast and kinetic, with a noir sensibility that never loses sight of the human costs involved when a community’s safety is on the line.

The Lowdown is described by Time magazine as one of the year’s best crime dramas, a verdict that rings through the show’s brisk pacing, humor, philosophical musings, and principled outrage. Harjo’s Tulsa—an evolving, mixed-cultural city at the intersection of the Southern and Western United States—serves not only as backdrop but as a central character. The series explores what it means to serve a community when privilege and power tilt the playing field, and how truth-telling can survive in a landscape where personal safety and family loyalties are at stake. The project also marks Harjo’s deliberate shift from Rez Dogs—his acclaimed coming-of-age drama about Indigenous youths—to a more traditional, star-driven thriller, while maintaining the core impulse of centering Native voices and perspectives.

Production design emphasizes place and mood: a rare-book shop above a diner, a nearby record shop, and a neon-lit sidewalk that invites curiosity and danger alike. The TV drama’s energy stems from its willingness to bounce between witty exchanges, ethical debates, and brutal confrontations, showing how Lee’s quest for truth tests his own capacity for solidarity and self-sacrifice. The show partially answers its own question about serving the community by demonstrating that accountability is a communal project—one that includes not just the press, but family, neighbors, and even political rivals who bear on Tulsa’s future.

Eight episodes comprise the first season, and early screenings suggest a program that is ambitious as it is entertaining. The Lowdown’s blend of humor, moral inquiry, and hard-edged action positions it among Indigenous-led, genre-bending television that has become a hallmark of contemporary culture. The collaboration between Harjo and Hawke—a testament to the enduring appeal of Tulsa as a setting and a mission—offers a narrative that moves with momentum while inviting viewers to consider what it costs to stand up for truth in a city where power and memory collide.

Time’s review of The Lowdown underscores its place in a broader shift toward regionally rooted, character-driven crime dramas. Harjo’s background—most notably his work on Reservation Dogs—helps explain why the series feels both intimate and expansive: it honors local voices and stories even as it aspires to a universal appeal. In The Lowdown, the protagonist’s pursuit of justice is inseparable from the lives he unsettles, including his family’s safety and the larger fate of Tulsa’s neighborhoods.

The Lowdown’s Tulsa is not simply a backdrop; it is a living, breathing component of the drama, a city where the past loops into the present and where questions of community, memory, and accountability play out against a jagged, neon-lit edge. The show’s Indigenous-authored lens, combined with a star-driven thriller framework, marks a notable entry in Culture & Entertainment for the current television season. As Harjo and Hawke push the series toward its eight-episode arc, viewers can expect a narrative that continues to balance brisk procedural momentum with a deeply human entanglement of loyalties, love, and the costs of truth.