Josh Holloway has always seemed tailor-made for superstardom, and fifteen years after the conclusion of his breakout run on Lost, J.J. Abrams gives him the stylish vehicle he deserves with Duster. (May 15, Max).
As an ace wheelman in 1970s Arizona who winds up working with a newbie federal agent to take down his boss, Holloway gets to charm, seduce, and kick a– while burning rubber and making women swoon. Driving a sexy and ferocious muscle car that’s a veritable extension of himself, he’s like something out of a dime store novel—or, given his series’ adrenalized action and romance, an outlaw cast in a Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard mold.
(The series premieres May 15 on Max.)
Jim (Holloway) has long blonde locks, a killer smile, and a cherry-red Plymouth Duster—decorated with a black hood and lines down its sides—that deserves its own magazine cover. This growling V8 beast is Jim’s meal ticket, since he earns a living as a driver and money-collector for crime boss Saxton (Keith David), who’s long-time friends with Jim’s retired-crook dad Wade (Corbin Bernsen) and who previously employed Jim’s brother Joey, until he perished in a mysterious car explosion.
Jim is still nursing that painful wound, and after saving Saxton’s son Royce (Benjamin Charles Watson) by bringing him the heart he needs for a transplant, he has it reopened by Nina (Rachel Hilson), an FBI agent just out of the academy who, upon arriving at the Phoenix field office, embarks on a mission to take down Saxton—with Jim as the key to her plans.
As a young single Black woman in an agency that’s only recently been integrated, Nina is forced to stomach a lot of racist and sexist garbage from her colleague Grant (Dan Tracy) and her superior Abbott (Greg Grunberg), the latter of whom bristles at her inquiry into Saxton.
Intolerance is a constant impediment for Nina and her Navajo partner Awan (Asivak Koostachin), and Duster smoothly integrates the duo’s battle against prejudice into a narrative that adheres to a tried-and-true template. Renegade cops, screaming-mad bosses, undercover operations, and grand conspiracies are all part of this southern-fried package, as are shootouts, barroom brawls, and tire-screeching car chases that conclude with autos launching into the air, spinning mid-flight, and crashing calamitously to the ground.
Nina gets her hooks into Jim by telling him that his brother’s death wasn’t an accident; rather, he was blown up with C4, and Saxton is the likely culprit. Jim doesn’t want to believe this but, with his suspicions stoked, he agrees to collaborate with her in order to clear Saxton’s name.
This is dangerous business for the driver, who splits his time between being Saxton’s errand boy—and dealing with the bigwig’s psychotic right-hand man Billy (Evan Jones)—and caring for Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez), the young daughter of Izzy (Camille Guaty), who thinks Jim is her uncle even though it’s clear he’s secretly her father. Additionally complicating his covert sleuthing is Sergeant Groomes (Donal Logue), a pedophilic local cop in a cowboy hat who resonates as a sleazy cross between Boss Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane, and who soon learns about Jim and Nina’s relationship.
Duster traverses familiar terrain and yet the show—created by Abrams and LaToya Morgan—has attitude and flair to spare. Better still, it’s bursting with personality, beginning with Holloway as a ne’er-do-well with a heart of gold and a gift for using a clutch. The actor hasn’t had a role this good since the island-stranded Sawyer, and he nails it, radiating the sort of neon-bright hunky charisma that turns female heads and impresses male compatriots.
He’s not, however, the sole standout of this streaming affair. Hilson ably holds her own as the fearless Nina, who has a fiery glint in her eye that speaks to her no-holds-barred determination, and whose motivation for taking down Saxton is personal as well as professional. David, meanwhile, is all untrustworthy charm and viciousness as the imposing Saxton, his every smile and baritone compliment laced with menace.
As he’s demonstrated for more than four decades, David is a national treasure, and Duster gives him plenty of opportunities to once again prove it as the series’ de facto villain. That said, Abrams and Morgan’s story affords all its participants multiple chances to shine, whether they’re navigating a life-or-death situation or merely shooting the breeze about their hang-ups, struggles, traumatic pasts, or geeky obsessions (such as Awan’s fondness for Superman).
It also gradually spins a tangled web involving gruesome bowling alley murders, lesbian romance, thwarted weddings, hidden videotapes, buried bodies in the middle of the desert, blackmail photos, union protests, mental hospital-confined ex-cops, Mexican assassins, Russians, the CIA, Looney Tunes cartoons, and Colonel Parker and Elvis’ original blue suede shoes—not to mention various shout-outs to ‘70s TV, music, and cinema, highlighted by a great Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid bit.
Duster is a throwback that never lets its self-consciousness undermine its drama, and it maintains a firm grip on the wheel even as veers this way and that, sending its heroes on one perilous assignment after another, including Jim’s late trip to Vegas with Saxton (and an unexpected stowaway) to meet with none other than Howard Hughes (Tom Nelis) about a very important commodity that Saxton has procured for him and which has grave implications for those in Washington, DC.
The series is at once bursting at the seams and impressively streamlined, its diversions and complications coming across as natural outgrowths of its primary plot. Moreover, it never gets distracted enough to sideline its headliners, whose performances—and rapport—are rich, colorful, and uniformly likable.
From its Matchbox car-ified title sequence to its decade-specific tunes, Duster lovingly captures the ragamuffin spirit of its chosen era, as do Holloway and Hilson as unlikely allies attempting, in their own ways, to exact revenge for past misdeeds and to demonstrate that they’re more than just marginal players in someone else’s story.
Concluding its eight-episode tale with satisfying resolutions and a few tantalizing loose threads that beg for another season, it’s a crime thriller of impressive poise and swagger, and one of 2025’s most pleasurable small-screen surprises.
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