Banshee's premise was explained to me as "Jewel thief gets released from jail and then pretends to be the new sheriff of a small town as he attempts to track down his former accomplices". From that, I kind of went in expecting something dry and a bit quirky.
Not so much. While I was thinking it would maybe be like Northern Exposure meets Breaking Bad, what I actually got might be better described as "a car crash meeting of Riverdale and Spartacus: Blood & Sand".
So yeah, dry and quirky isn't Banshee's thing. Sex and violence, on other hand, most definitely is. There's frequent nudity and numerous sexual scenes, and even more frequent (and often rather unnecessarily protracted) bloody mayhem.
This isn't to say that the premise that was described to me is inaccurate. It's not. The show is very much about a jewel thief pretending to be a small town sheriff while trying to reconnect with his former accomplices, but it's also about that jewel thief trying to stay one step ahead of the dangerous Ukrainian mobster who wants him dead. And about the ruthless crime boss who pretty much runs the town in which our main character is carrying out his sheriff-impersonating shenanigans. So many people get bloodily beaten or killed in the course of the season's ten episodes that things occasionally venture across the line from "ferocious" to "farcical".
If you don't mind the deliberately shocking content, and the rapidly escalating implausibility of the premise, there's fun to be had with Banshee, but it's very much exploitation-level stuff, on the whole.
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