HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL

Justified’s modern Western hero Raylan Givens finds a mess of lethal trouble in Detroit

- ILEANE RUDOLPH

Justified: City Primeval

SERIES PREMIERE

Tuesday, July 18, 10/9c, FX

LAST WE SAW him, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) had taken his trusty pistol and Stetson to Miami and made cautious peace with longtime frenemy Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), closing out six seasons (2010–15) of FX’s acclaimed drama Justified. Eight years later, Raylan returns—a little grayer and slower—in the limited series Justified: City Primeval. Just don’t expect him to give quarter to his latest nemesis, perhaps the most dangerous killer to spring from the pen of Elmore Leonard.

This tale of good, evil and the spaces between is set in Detroit, where Raylan’s job is to nail whoever murdered a powerful judge. The top suspect: sunny sociopath Clement Mansell (a beautifully evil Boyd Holbrook), antagonist of Leonard’s 1980 novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. That book had long attracted attention from the likes of directors Sam Peckinpah and Quentin Tarantino but was never filmed, until now. Interestingly, Raylan isn’t in it, but, says Justified executive producer Michael Dinner, “We thought it would be cool to do this mashup of the character we knew and this book Elmore wrote.”