Set in an alternate timeline where New York City was far more devastated from the 2008 financial collapse and never recovered, a surging crime wave and an emerging underworld economy of illegal nightclubs linked by a web of taxicabs is thriving. Multiple characters are followed including Renny (Micheál Richardson aka Micheál Neeson) a young fashion photographer moving drugs through the taxi network for the party circuit, Reza (Tony Naumovski), the local front man for an international crime syndicate that's looking to take over the city, and CAB partners Santiago and More (Manny Perez and Michael Rabe respectively) who are part of an experimental department within the strained and undermanned NYPD using undercover Taxicabs to tackle the out of control criminal element.
Quietly released in 2020 on Tubi and Amazon Prime, Big Dogs is the quasi-speculative fiction crime drama series created by Adam Dunn, based on his series of books following the character of Everett More, with the first season based on the first book in the series, Rivers of Gold. Adam Dunn had made it known a TV adaptation of his books was a major priority, and in 2017 it was announced active development had begun on a series. Now with Big Dogs, this is not your ordinary series. While it features many actors, producers, and directors who've worked on shows ranging from Law & Order to Homeland, this was produced independently by Adam Dunn for the purpose of being sold to a network with a second season already in pre-production per a press release by the New York film commission. While the show may get another season produced, I can't imagine it being long for this world as a series because it seems to have very little presence or traffic, and what buzz there is has been mostly skewing negative with only a small handful of positives talking less about the show itself and more making snide parallels to real world events. While the show has some individual elements that I can give credit to, it's unfortunately not all that well made.
When Big Dogs opens with an opening monologue by Brett Cullen as Captain McKeutchen it's an introduction that falls rather flat because rather than drawing us into the world Big Dogs is trying to create, it goes into a dump on Noricum Ripense that tries to draw parallels between the current situation in this show's New York City and this event from Ancient Rome, but unless you're well entrenched in Roman History you'll be hopelessly lost around 10% in as McKeutchen continues on before shoehorning in some other esoteric references that it's expecting the audience to know. Once we're past the clunky introductory speech things don't get much clearer with details of this world taken for granted as you wonder why cops are driving taxicabs or underground nightclubs with flashing neon lights and scantily clad women are playing what sounds like 1920s Jazz. If you were to periodically switch shake your head around while watching two different TV sets with one playing John Wick and the other playing The Shield, that would only begin to approach the level of jarring "huh?" this show throws at you because it doesn't take time for exposition and viewer immersion instead cramming in more characters and locales without taking the time to make sure its audience is on the same page as the characters. In many ways Big Dogs has many problems I notice when an author attempts adapting their own work, such as Adam Dunn has done here, where they've transferred scenarios and characters from the book in such a way where it feels like it was still written for a book and not written for TV, and that's important because the rules for TV and books are massively different so you need someone detached from the source so it can be adapted in a digestible way for the audience.
Outside of its clumsy story things aren't much better on the technical side with the show feeling rather cheap and flimsy with its reach far exceeding its grasp in creating a dystopian New York City. You don't see a lot of independently produced crime dramas let alone one's with an alternate timeline approach and there's a reason for that, because it's very very expensive and if you don't have the resources to pull it off, it will show. As I said the show does have directorial alumni from other shows of this ilk such as Blacklist, Homeland, or Law & Order, and while visually speaking there are superficial notes to the filmmaking that you can point to, everything feels a little off because it doesn't have the resources to add the extra polish needed to mimic the style of its influences. Even the color grading of some shots looks off, such as a scene where Renny visits his mother suffering from dementia, and the gamma is turned up to an almost painful degree with the whites in the scene becoming almost painful to look at.
The show's cast feels like they're trying to bring life to this material, but it often feels like it's weighing them down. The one standout in the cast in my opinion was Manny Perez playing officer Santiago who gives some good energy to what's an admittedly standard "green cop" character but the performance elevates it to a respectable level. Other performances are more mixed. Micheál Richardson, whose father is Liam Neeson, has a major part in the show but he's still very green and doesn't fit all that comfortably into a leading role. Richardson looks like a leading man in that he has his father's rugged good looks, but he doesn't carry any weight or authority in his performance and often feels unsure and reserved. Other actors are basically just filling archetypes with Brett Cullen filling the role of burnt out police captain and Michael Rabe playing an overly reserved stiff whose just a charisma void.
Big Dogs tries to make an epic crime show without network or streamer resources and the results are unfortunately not great. While some performances in the cast are decent and the show can sometimes capture that gritty look associated with the genre, the confused storytelling that erects a wall between the audience and narrative with a lot of insular information we're not privy to as well as a noticeable cheapness to the production design illustrate the show probably needed more polish before it was committed. The Jury's still out on whether independently produced TV shows of this scale can work, but this isn't exactly compelling evidence in its favor.
Quietly released in 2020 on Tubi and Amazon Prime, Big Dogs is the quasi-speculative fiction crime drama series created by Adam Dunn, based on his series of books following the character of Everett More, with the first season based on the first book in the series, Rivers of Gold. Adam Dunn had made it known a TV adaptation of his books was a major priority, and in 2017 it was announced active development had begun on a series. Now with Big Dogs, this is not your ordinary series. While it features many actors, producers, and directors who've worked on shows ranging from Law & Order to Homeland, this was produced independently by Adam Dunn for the purpose of being sold to a network with a second season already in pre-production per a press release by the New York film commission. While the show may get another season produced, I can't imagine it being long for this world as a series because it seems to have very little presence or traffic, and what buzz there is has been mostly skewing negative with only a small handful of positives talking less about the show itself and more making snide parallels to real world events. While the show has some individual elements that I can give credit to, it's unfortunately not all that well made.
When Big Dogs opens with an opening monologue by Brett Cullen as Captain McKeutchen it's an introduction that falls rather flat because rather than drawing us into the world Big Dogs is trying to create, it goes into a dump on Noricum Ripense that tries to draw parallels between the current situation in this show's New York City and this event from Ancient Rome, but unless you're well entrenched in Roman History you'll be hopelessly lost around 10% in as McKeutchen continues on before shoehorning in some other esoteric references that it's expecting the audience to know. Once we're past the clunky introductory speech things don't get much clearer with details of this world taken for granted as you wonder why cops are driving taxicabs or underground nightclubs with flashing neon lights and scantily clad women are playing what sounds like 1920s Jazz. If you were to periodically switch shake your head around while watching two different TV sets with one playing John Wick and the other playing The Shield, that would only begin to approach the level of jarring "huh?" this show throws at you because it doesn't take time for exposition and viewer immersion instead cramming in more characters and locales without taking the time to make sure its audience is on the same page as the characters. In many ways Big Dogs has many problems I notice when an author attempts adapting their own work, such as Adam Dunn has done here, where they've transferred scenarios and characters from the book in such a way where it feels like it was still written for a book and not written for TV, and that's important because the rules for TV and books are massively different so you need someone detached from the source so it can be adapted in a digestible way for the audience.
Outside of its clumsy story things aren't much better on the technical side with the show feeling rather cheap and flimsy with its reach far exceeding its grasp in creating a dystopian New York City. You don't see a lot of independently produced crime dramas let alone one's with an alternate timeline approach and there's a reason for that, because it's very very expensive and if you don't have the resources to pull it off, it will show. As I said the show does have directorial alumni from other shows of this ilk such as Blacklist, Homeland, or Law & Order, and while visually speaking there are superficial notes to the filmmaking that you can point to, everything feels a little off because it doesn't have the resources to add the extra polish needed to mimic the style of its influences. Even the color grading of some shots looks off, such as a scene where Renny visits his mother suffering from dementia, and the gamma is turned up to an almost painful degree with the whites in the scene becoming almost painful to look at.
The show's cast feels like they're trying to bring life to this material, but it often feels like it's weighing them down. The one standout in the cast in my opinion was Manny Perez playing officer Santiago who gives some good energy to what's an admittedly standard "green cop" character but the performance elevates it to a respectable level. Other performances are more mixed. Micheál Richardson, whose father is Liam Neeson, has a major part in the show but he's still very green and doesn't fit all that comfortably into a leading role. Richardson looks like a leading man in that he has his father's rugged good looks, but he doesn't carry any weight or authority in his performance and often feels unsure and reserved. Other actors are basically just filling archetypes with Brett Cullen filling the role of burnt out police captain and Michael Rabe playing an overly reserved stiff whose just a charisma void.
Big Dogs tries to make an epic crime show without network or streamer resources and the results are unfortunately not great. While some performances in the cast are decent and the show can sometimes capture that gritty look associated with the genre, the confused storytelling that erects a wall between the audience and narrative with a lot of insular information we're not privy to as well as a noticeable cheapness to the production design illustrate the show probably needed more polish before it was committed. The Jury's still out on whether independently produced TV shows of this scale can work, but this isn't exactly compelling evidence in its favor.