The Lowdown - Season 1

The Lowdown is about Lee Raybon, played by Ethan Hawke. I really wanted to like The Lowdown. A series with Ethan Hawke, written and directed by Sterlin Harjo, set in Tulsa and announced as a neo-noir about truth and power, it’s almost a checklist of everything I’m drawn to. And to be fair, in individual moments, The Lowdown is indeed fascinating, captivating, enigmatic, sharp, and distinctly quirky. But the longer I watched, the stronger the feeling became that the series is too enamored with its own chaos.

The series requires the viewer to find Raybon's obsession fascinating.

The Lowdown revolves around Lee Raybon, played by Ethan Hawke, an unconventional citizen journalist from Tulsa who primarily uses his bookstore as a front for his true passion, uncovering hidden truths. When a powerful businessman dies shortly after Lee publishes a critical article about him, he is dragged into a dangerous web of corruption, power plays, and family secrets. As he digs deeper, he tries to keep his private life, his daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and his ex-partner Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn) somewhat balanced. But his obsessive quest for the truth touches everything around him, and it soon becomes clear that truth itself poses the greatest risk.



Hawke portrays Raybon as a journalist obsessed with exposing power, proudly calling himself a “truthstorian.” Lee is not a detached observer; the truth feels almost like personal property to him. He pursues conflicts with the same intensity with which he analyzes them, creating moments of thrilling television but also friction. Sometimes it’s intriguing, sometimes exhausting, and it painfully highlights how thin the line is between drive and self-destruction.

Yet, Raybon himself is the biggest stumbling block. Hawke plays him with full conviction, but the character is consistently chaotic, making development hardly noticeable. He is always tired, always angry, always convinced of his own rightness. It feels like a deliberate study of a man slowly undermining himself, but genuine self-reflection is absent. The series asks viewers to find Raybon’s obsession fascinating, while it is essentially destructive and selfish. His relationships suffer, his surroundings are damaged, but The Lowdown continues to present him as someone who simply sees too much to function normally.

Tulsa as a setting is one of the strongest elements. You can feel that Sterlin Harjo knows and understands the city. The history, social relations, and deep-seated distrust of institutions are naturally present. At the same time, that context often remains more atmosphere than substance. Themes such as power, class, and historical guilt are touched upon but rarely fully explored. It’s as if the series prefers to suggest rather than delve deeper, afraid of giving away its own mystique. The city thus becomes almost a character in itself, but a character that raises more questions than it answers.

It is a series that piques curiosity.

The tone of The Lowdown also began to bother me more and more. The series tries to be a dark thriller, critical drama, and dark comedy all at once, but that mix doesn’t always feel solid. Some scenes are sharp and poignant, while others seem awkwardly quirky, as if the series wants to appear interesting at all costs. As a result, my attention waned more quickly. That doesn’t mean The Lowdown is a failure. On the contrary, some episodes and scenes linger, especially when the series slows down and relies on silence, glances, and uncomfortable conversations. In those moments, Hawke shows how much power he can draw from minimal means.

The Lowdown invites reflection but doesn’t always reward it, leaving questions unanswered and choices unsatisfying. Perhaps that’s precisely the intention. For me, however, it mainly remains that the series is more fascinated by the concept of truth than by what it truly means for people. It’s a series that piques curiosity but tests it just as often, and it can evoke both admiration and irritation.