tartysuz

This is the first thing I read about Banshee:

"Cinemax's next original action series, produced by Alan Ball. Pennsylvania Dutch Noir! Three words I never thought I'd see together! Premieres January 11. So far in the various teasers there's what appears to be a transgender assassin, a giant albino, and Ben Cross."

I didn't think it was real. Oh, but it is!

Granted, the situations might be outrageously unrealistic. ( Spoilers )

But as devilc says, the show is structurally brilliant. There's a large cast of supporting players whose stories mirror, parallel, and play off each other at a literary level, besides their plot-specific entanglements.

One of the knocks on the show is that it's full of gratuitous sex and violence. It's also one of the show's charms. I call on this quote by Katie Dunneback from the Library Journal: "For erotic romance, the development of the relationship again is the focus of the story, but here the sex scenes are the primary way in which the development is revealed to the reader." (This applies to the violence as well. It's an action romance.)

That's how you can have a show that's ultra-violent, has a lot of nudity and depictions of sex, and is a character-centred show.

The second episode is a bit like an After School Special -- directed by David Fincher.