Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 3 September

Dark Winds (Roland, 2020-)

One of the many pos­it­ives in hav­ing reg­u­lar income once again is being able to restart some paused stream­ing subscriptions.

AMC+ was sac­ri­ficed a while back because it isn’t a heavy­weight com­pet­it­or to the likes of N*tfl*x, Appl3 or D1sney and wasn’t provid­ing enough mater­i­al for me to talk about on the radio.

But back in September 2023, when it launched in Aotearoa, I was very enthu­si­ast­ic and the show I was most enthu­si­ast­ic about was Dark Winds:

Based on a series of nov­els by Tony Hillerman (and con­tin­ued after his death by daugh­ter Anne), Dark Winds is a detect­ive series with a twist, that being the crimes are com­mit­ted on the Navajo reser­va­tion which is policed by their own department.

In series one, set in 1970, exper­i­enced Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) is paired up with rook­ie Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) to invest­ig­ate the bru­tal murder of three Navajo in a motel room while the FBI are focused on the dar­ing heli­copter get­away from a bank rob­bery in Gallup, New Mexico, headed in the dir­ec­tion of the reservation.

Are the two cases con­nec­ted? If they are, here we have the kind of jur­is­dic­tion­al ten­sion that shows like this thrive on.

Add some old school racism on the part of the big city fed­erales and you have a recipe for some great drama.

The writ­ing staff on the show are all Native American and the show takes the beliefs of the Navajo (or Diné as they call them­selves) ser­i­ously, includ­ing the shame of those Diné who were not brought up with access to their own tra­di­tions – a situ­ation we are not unfa­mil­i­ar with here in Aotearoa.

Dark Winds is built for weekly tele­vi­sion so there are spaces for ad breaks as well as “Previously on…” and “Next week on…” fea­tures which might get a bit annoy­ing if you are binge­ing online. But, if you are pin­ing for some New Mexico desert land­scapes after the end of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, this will have a famil­i­ar look to it and there are so many books in the fran­chise that I can see Dark Winds going on for at least as long as those shows.

As pre­dicted, Dark Winds has gone on for anoth­er two sea­sons and there’s a fourth on the way.

Also covered in that RNZ Widescreen intro­duc­tion to AMC+: the superb par­ody series Documentary Now! and the drama Rectify which is no longer available.

A sub­scrip­tion to AMC+ in New Zealand also gives you access to the loc­al ver­sions of Shudder and Acorn, and so presents excel­lent value even in these straitened times.

Where to watch Dark Winds

Aotearoa: Streaming on AMC+

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video, SBS On Demand or AMC+

Canada: Streaming on AMC+

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Now TV (2 seasons)

India: Streaming on Prime Video (2 seasons)

USA: Streaming on AMC+ or Philo or Netflix (2 seasons)