“What Did She Say?” “Nothing I Don’t Already Know.”
About the time that I started reading Tony Hillerman’s books, AMC created Dark Winds, a TV series with his characters. I put off watching it for a while so I wouldn’t run across spoilers for books I hadn’t read yet, but I decided to dive into the first season recently. For fans of the books, it’s going to be disappointing.
The show takes up back to 1971 and introduces us to Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), a lieutenant with the Navajo tribal police. As the series kicks off, Deputy Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) has just been transferred to Leaphorn’s station. Rounding out the main officers at the station is Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten). We are also introduced to Joe’s wife, Emma (Deanna Allison) a nurse at a nearby clinic.
Over the course of this first season, the trio of officers look into a case involving two Navajo who are murdered while a blind woman is sitting in the room and left alone. Who could have done it? Meanwhile, the FBI ask for help finding what happened to a helicopter used in a bank heist that vanished in the reservation.
This book is at least partially based on the third book in the series, Listening Woman, one of Joe’s solo cases. It’s been a couple of years since I read it, but I don’t remember for sure what elements came from that book and what might have been borrowed from others. I feel like a subplot involving Joe’s backstory might have been a different book, but don’t quote me on that. I will say this, the show ignores the best part of the climax from the novel, which really disappointed me.
I’m nine books into the series, and at this point, Joe and Jim have just started working together, while Manuelito hasn’t been introduced yet. So, I knew going in that some changes would need to be made. And if those changes had been handled well, I would have been okay with them. (At least, I’d like to think so.) But what we got here felt like completely different characters. Joe is much more open to Navajo religious practices while Jim is dismissive of them. This is a complete flip of their characters. Manuelito lives in a trailer, which Jim should be doing. Of course, that would be hard with Jim’s secret. At this point, why are you claiming to adapt these books? Just create your own characters already.
Speaking of the Navajo religious practices, the novels have always treated them with respect, but also not had plot elements depend on them, which this show does. Another element I didn’t like.
And, why is the series set in 1971? I could get setting the series at some point in the past, but 1971 feels very specific. The first book came out in 1970, and the only novel that Tony Hillerman published in 1971 wasn’t part of this series. I could understand if they were honoring when the first book came out, but this way left me scratching my head.
There’s also some anti-White rhetoric to the show. Now, I am not trying to say that Whites haven’t mistreated Native Americans over the centuries. But this show seems to try to show that whenever they can, to the point that they introduce something into the first two episodes specifically to have another example. A horrible, tragic, and evil example, yes, but what does it have to do with the rest of the season?
Finally, there’s Joe’s backstory. Granted, he didn’t have much of one in the early novels, which were very focused on the mystery and nothing else. But I don’t quite understand why they decided to give him the backstory they did here unless it’s to give him some tragedy to play.
I will give the leads this, all four of them are good with the material they have. The other actors? They are a bit more hit or miss.
And the plot of the show? I found it slow. The connections felt tenuous at best, and the various elements aren’t fully developed to really flesh things out. The climax does work, but I just didn’t feel it was supported by what came before. We get declarations more than detection most of the time, which is frustrating because the books are so well plotted.
The show is filmed in the Southwest, and the locations are beautiful. It really captures the isolation of the reservation.
Season 1 is just six hour long episodes. (Well, less than that without commercials.)
Since the other seasons are the same length, I am thinking I might continue on. I am curious to see what they are going to do with these versions of the characters. And maybe having my expectations low enough will help. But I am not a fan of how season 1 of Dark Winds turned out.
