Sheriff Country: A Police Series Playing with Fire

The resolute Mickey Fox is the sheriff of Edgewater County, a small community in Northern California where everyone knows everyone. The protagonist of Sheriff Country daily deals with various types of crimes of varying severity, from domestic abuse to drug dealing, from missing persons to daytime robberies. But the most complex challenges, as she will discover in the first four episodes we previewed, will come from within her own family.

Her father Wes grows marijuana, leading an existence on the fringes of legality; her daughter Skye occasionally uses drugs; and her ex-husband Travis – a lawyer by profession – has recently started a relationship with one of her colleagues. When Skye finds herself directly involved in a murder case, ending up as the main suspect, Mickey must balance her duties as sheriff with those of a mother, in an increasingly complex investigation where she can trust nothing and no one.

Fire and Blood in a Straightforward Series

Some will have already realized they are facing the spin-off of the popular Fire Country, a series centered on a courageous group of firefighters. The character of Mickey Fox was indeed already introduced in the second season of the aforementioned, a kind of test to evaluate public interest in a potential branching of the franchise. The operation received a green light, with the same team behind the original project directly handling it.

The narrative focuses on the dynamics of a small community in the United States, the classic "quiet town" where in reality there is little to no quiet. Everyone is under pressure, the lines between law and justice are drawn conveniently, and a certain bigotry reigns within the community. Mickey must constantly choose whether to protect the people she loves, even if it means breaking her oath, or blindly serve the community that elected her.

The main case of the opening narrative arc is interspersed with other more or less incisive ones, with the first two episodes putting too much on the plate in a relatively short runtime – each episode is just under forty-five minutes – which doesn't allow for a thorough exploration of the various figures involved. At the same time, numerous contrivances in the management of events are also noted, from unspoken truths to impromptu revelations, in the frantic search for plot twists to keep viewers interested.

A Woman Ready for Anything

All things considered, Sheriff Country is the typical procedural police drama that meticulously follows the consolidated formula of CBS crime dramas. A structure that has proven to work in terms of ratings, but offers relatively little room for maneuver to fully explore sensitive topics, often resorting to stylistic and expository solutions that look to nineties seriality, without the introspective nuances of more modern productions.

Crimes are almost always solved thanks to the stubborn protagonist's intuition, who seems to know everything and always gets away with it even when her own morality is put to the test. Moral lessons of various kinds appear here and there, with the risk of making everything too didactic and gratuitously rhetorical.

The series' main strength lies in Morena Baccarin's performance. The Brazilian-born actress is here in an absolute leading role that allows her to show little-explored sides of her talent, putting her charm and grit at the service of a script that, partly betraying her, lacks personality. 

And the connection with Fire Country? It is maintained through cameos and occasional references, for a shared universe at least momentarily managed lightly, without forcing insistent crossovers and asking viewers to be aware of the parent series, thus opening up to wider and more heterogeneous audiences.