Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, David Alvarez, Bill Camp, Julia Mayorga, Alex Neustaedter, Mark Pellegrino, Rob Yang, Williams Apps, Emily Davis, Dallas Roberts, Namir Smallwood, Zenzi Williams, Jim True-Frost, Jon Collin Barclay, Caitlin Houlahan, Gordon Clapp, Clea Lewis, Federico Rodriguez, Bill Laing, Guy Boyd, Nicole Chanel Williams, Brittany Bellizeare, Emily Donahoe, Joanne Tucker, Riley Baron, Caitlin Cavannaugh, Jeremy Denzlinger, Brendan Burke, Rick Dutrow.

The United States of America was built on foundations that are arguably now struggling to hold up the overburdened and often shoddy structures that have come to dominate its landscape.

A country built on perceived freedom, on wisdom by the Founding Fathers, has for all intents and purposes become rotten, it has begun to sink on the weight of its one-time perceived importance, and for anyone who has spent a certain amount of time there, to see it suffer, to see it struggling because it cannot see the pain it has continually inflicted upon itself, it cannot understand the sheer grief that has come upon it because like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, it is revealed that the feet of clay cannot support the gilded fortunes, the head, of the upper levels of society.

American Rust may have the appearance of one of the new wave of detective dramas that weaves itself into the landscape of the forgotten townships, the overlooked and ignored lives that make up the life of the old pioneering spirit, the sense of community, and yet its subtext is far more disturbing, and its gritty insight the viewer is warned of just how far those feet have clay have been allowed to sink into the mud and dirt left by those at the head.

At its core the nine-part series is a mirror of what has happened to the country, the laying waste of a generation affected by the blight of drugs, of the so-called American Dream revealing itself to be evolving into a nightmare, a rolling battle between what is decent, honest and true, and those that take advantage, those who destroy with ease.

It is said that for all the time that the country has existed that there has only been a relatively short period of peace, but as the interwoven tale of corruption, of the denial of rights, of suspicion, of a culture that is unravelling, it is perhaps seen that the Rust Belt of America is the first staging post of a country at war with itself, and like the U.K., will do well to avoid its own internal civil war.

Beautifully filmed, slow and deliberate in its build up, and with some seriously excellent acting kudos from its passionate crew, and in performances by Maura Tierney as Grace Poe, David Alvarez as the subdued and on the run Isaac English, Mark Pellegrino as Grace’s husband Virgil, and Jeff Daniels as the ever increasingly at odds and arms police officer Del Harris, the sense of a nation, of its people hanging on in ever increasing desperation is palpable, and this sad state of affairs, brought on by decades of under investment, of seeing the race for ownership of millions at the expense of the human spirit, should make every one of us fear for what comes next, for what happens in the heartlands of America can soon happen here.

A dramatically enthralling series, American Rust shows quite plainly just how tarnished the dream has become.

Ian D. Hall