That Dirty Black Bag Review: A Spaghetti Western with a Sluggish Narrative Pulse

Invention can be tough to come by in a setting as frequently depicted as the Old West. Like many a spaghetti western before it, That Dirty Black Bag cranks up its violence to the point of absurdity. The show’s very namesake refers to a sack of rotting severed heads, which the single-minded bounty hunter Red Bill (Douglas Booth) lugs around because, as he and the title of the first episode both explain, “a head weighs less than a body.”

That Dirty Black Bag certainly doesn’t lack for gruesome images, such as the sight of liquid dripping from Red Bill’s bag onto a barstool, but the series is also darkly funny. Red Bill amasses quite the collection because lawmen like Greenvale’s unscrupulous Sheriff McCoy (Dominic Cooper) don’t always want to pay the price on heads in such a condition. Though initially the picture of the intimidating, taciturn stranger, Red Bill fusses over the heads like precious cargo, pouring water on them to slow their decomposition.

Many of the show’s characters are citizens of Greenvale, a dusty town that once hosted a gold rush but now sits parched of riches, as well as water. One farmer, Steve (Christian Cooke), insists that the Lord has told him that the five-year drought that’s plagued the town will end soon. He tills the cracked earth with his family in fruitless preparation, defiant of the elements as well as the wealthy Thompson (Paterson Joseph), who wants to buy his land and dig for gold. Though a family man now, Steve very much still has feelings for Eve (Niv Sultan), who’s the proprietor of the local brothel and one of Greenvale’s most quietly influential citizens.

Abundant in dimly lit indoor scenes bathed in bluish-gray hues and set to ominous string music, the subplots in the three episodes made available to press are tough to distinguish from so many other TV dramas. The scenes involving McCoy, Red Bill, and the characters they encounter, like a reclusive cannibal played by Aidan Gillen, are uniformly more engaging, with Cooper’s performance consistently radiating a mischievous glee. Though McCoy is seemingly determined to do his job, he’s cheerfully sadistic and stubborn, dragging his long-suffering henchman, Curt (Ivan Shaw), on excursions that often result in an unexpected burst of gore.

That Dirty Black Bag finds its footing as it increasingly leans into stylized grit and violence, as in the image of a desert expanse full of people buried up to their chins in hot sand. The series is doubtlessly setting the stage for an eventual explosion of conflict encompassing parties both in and out of Greenvale, but with the early storylines mostly given over to the slow reveal of everyone’s past, it’s easy to wish that it took a little less time to pick up steam.