< Bass Reeves deserves better — 'Lawmen' doesn't do justice to the Black U.S. marshal

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

The Paramount+ anthology series "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" is out this Sunday with its first installment. It chronicles the adventures of one of the first Black men to serve as a deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the program is a noble effort which often struggles to live up to the story of its legendary lead character.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" should've started with a scene like this one deep in the third episode, where Reeves is already a marshal, taking a prisoner to jail when he gets in a deadly argument with the white man who is supposed to be his assistant, also known as a posse man.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

DENNIS QUAID: (As Sherill Lynn) You think another white posse man's going to ride out with you, help you like I have? And now you going to shoot me.

DAVID OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves) No, but they will.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUN FIRING)

DEGGANS: What follows is a gunfight with a gang trying to free the prisoner. Reeves, played by David Oyelowo, shows his courage and his dead aim with a firearm. But viewers won't see that for a while. Instead, the series begins 13 years earlier, when Reeves is an enslaved man working for an arrogant officer in the Confederate army. The officer responds cruelly when Reeves asks if he can learn to read.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves) I'd still like to learn, master, so I can study the Bible.

DEGGANS: The officer drops the N-word while telling him Black people don't really go to heaven.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

SHEA WHIGHAM: (As George Reeves) If you're going anywhere, you're going to where there's nothing. Only white folks go to the big dance, boy.

DEGGANS: And later, the officer suggests they play a card game where the prize is Reeves' freedom. But when Reeves sees the officer cheat...

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves) I played a queen of hearts. I had it.

WHIGHAM: (As George Reeves) Oh, there's only one queen of hearts in this deck.

DEGGANS: ...Reeves loses his temper...

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

WHIGHAM: (As George Reeves, inaudible).

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves, inaudible).

WHIGHAM: (As George Reeves, inaudible).

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves, inaudible).

DEGGANS: ...And beats his master severely, forcing Reeves to go on the run. This long preamble keeps us from what we really want to watch - our hero as a bold lawman reenacting the triumphs of the real-life Bass Reeves, who reportedly arrested 3,000 criminals during the late 1800s. This series takes way too long to build his legend, showing how Reeves spent time living with Native Americans and then as a failed farmer before becoming a marshal. And yet we don't see other important moments from his past, like how he learned how to shoot and fight so well or why he's so independent at a time when people of color were so oppressed. One hint we get is that he's devoutly religious, as he explains when another marshal, played by Dennis Quaid, needles him for his beliefs.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

QUAID: (As Sherrill Lynn) You still believe in the Lord that let you spend half your life in chains?

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves) Man made those chains. It was God who gave me the hope to believe in a future without them.

DEGGANS: Oyelowo plays Reeves as a man of few words with empathy for people of color. But his lack of words makes space for long speeches from know-it-all white guys played by ace character actors like Quaid and Donald Sutherland as the judge who hires him as a marshal.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAWMEN: BASS REEVES")

DONALD SUTHERLAND: (As Isaac Parker) was encouraged to hire you for the color of your skin because the Indians would listen to someone like you, but that's not why I called you in. I need a man with a good gun and a straight spine. You up for the task?

OYELOWO: (As Bass Reeves) I wouldn't be sitting here in my Sunday best if I wasn't.

DEGGANS: As a Black man who loves westerns, I've complained for many years about the lack of a great film or TV show about Reeves, whose exploits, some say, inspired the fictional Lone Ranger character. But the four episodes of Paramount+'s series I've seen so far fall short. Trying so hard to be a modern Western epic, they often forget to be entertaining, turning one of the Old West's most compelling figures into a virtuous cipher in the process. I'm Eric Deggans.

(SOUNDBITE OF COMMON SONG, "THEY SAY FEAT. KANYE WEST AND JOHN LEGEND")

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