Banshee’s premise is gloriously ridiculous: a recently released thief arrives in a small Pennsylvania town, watches the new sheriff get killed in a bar fight, and assumes the dead man’s identity. He then serves as sheriff while simultaneously planning a heist, avoiding the crime boss he stole from, and falling back in love with his former partner in crime, who has built a new life in the same town under her own assumed identity.
If that sounds like it shouldn’t work, you’re right. It shouldn’t. But the Cinemax series, which ran for four seasons from 2013 to 2016, commits so fully to its own absurdity that it transcends its premise through sheer force of conviction. Banshee is not a smart show in any traditional sense, but it’s a show made with extraordinary intelligence about what makes pulp storytelling work.
The Best Fights on Television
Banshee’s action sequences are, simply put, the best sustained fight choreography in television history. The show treats its fight scenes with the same care that a prestige drama brings to its dialogue scenes, choreographing brutal, extended brawls that tell stories through physical violence. Every punch has weight, every body slam has consequence, and the show consistently finds new ways to stage fights that should have run out of ideas seasons ago.
Antony Starr’s performance as Lucas Hood, the fake sheriff, is the show’s foundation. Starr plays the character with a controlled intensity that makes Hood simultaneously charismatic and dangerous. He’s a man without a real identity, performing different versions of himself for different audiences, and Starr layers each performance with enough specificity that you can see Hood calculating in real time. It’s the kind of lead performance that makes you wonder why its lead wasn’t more famous during the show’s run.
The supporting cast brings surprising depth to what could easily be stock characters. Hoon Lee’s Job, a transgender hacker and Hood’s closest ally, is a revelation, bringing fierce wit and unexpected vulnerability to a character that in lesser hands would have been a punchline. Frankie Faison’s Sugar Bates grounds the show’s more outrageous elements with quiet moral authority. Ulrich Thomsen’s Kai Proctor, the town’s Amish-born crime lord, provides a villain complex enough to generate genuine ambiguity.
The Cinemax production allowed the show a freedom with violence and sexuality that network television couldn’t match, and the creative team used that freedom purposefully rather than gratuitously. The show’s most violent moments serve character and story, making the audience feel the cost of the lifestyle Hood has chosen.
Pulp Without Apology
Banshee’s commitment to its pulp identity is also the barrier that kept it from wider recognition. The show is explicitly, unapologetically a genre exercise: the plots are outlandish, the coincidences are extraordinary, and the sheer amount of criminal activity that occurs in one small town strains credulity past the breaking point. Viewers who need realism or plausibility will bounce off immediately.
The romantic subplots are the show’s weakest element. Hood’s relationship with Carrie Hopewell, his former partner, generates plenty of physical chemistry but struggles to develop emotional depth beyond their shared criminal past. The show is better at staging passionate encounters than at writing the conversations between them.
Later seasons, while maintaining the action quality, sometimes lose the tightly wound plotting of the first two seasons. The show introduces new threats and complications that, while individually entertaining, can feel like they’re running out of ways to keep Hood’s identity secret without the town discovering the truth. The mechanism by which a fake sheriff avoids detection for four years requires increasing leaps of faith.
The show’s Cinemax home, while providing creative freedom, also limited its audience significantly. Banshee never received the attention that the quality of its craft deserved, making it one of the most consistently overlooked shows of the 2010s.
Identity as Performance
Beneath the fights and heists, Banshee has a genuine thematic interest in identity. Hood is a man with no real name performing a role, surrounded by other characters who are also performing versions of themselves that may or may not be authentic. Proctor is an ex-Amish crime lord. Carrie is a former thief pretending to be a suburban wife. Even the real citizens of Banshee are playing parts. The show argues that identity is always a kind of fiction, and that the fictions we choose define us more than any truth we might hide.
Should You Watch Banshee?
If you enjoy action television that delivers visceral thrills with genuine craft, Banshee is essential viewing. The fight choreography alone justifies the time investment, and Starr’s performance is one of the great hidden gems of 2010s television. Skip it if implausible premises are a dealbreaker, if explicit violence and sexuality aren’t for you, or if you need your dramas to operate in recognizable reality.
The Verdict on Banshee
Banshee is the best show almost nobody watched. Its fight choreography sets a standard that no other television series has matched, and Antony Starr’s performance as a man performing an identity reveals depths that the show’s pulp surface might not suggest. It’s loud, violent, improbable, and completely committed to every choice it makes. In a television landscape that often rewards restraint and prestige, Banshee makes a compelling case for the virtues of shameless, masterfully executed entertainment.