# City on a Hill (2019)

> An idealistic Brooklyn prosecutor and a compromised FBI veteran team up in early 1990s Boston to take down a Charlestown armored-car robbery family and the corruption behind it.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/68467

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 26
- Episode runtime: 55 min
- Status: Canceled
- Genres: crime, drama
- Created by: Chuck MacLean
- Network: Showtime
- Cast: Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, Jonathan Tucker, Jill Hennessy, Lauren E. Banks, Mark O'Brien, Lucia Ryan, Sarah Shahi
- TMDB rating: 7.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7187044/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: gritty, tense, brooding, morally compromised

## What critics say

Audience reception is positive but modest, with viewers praising the lead performances and period crime setting while finding the later seasons less compelling than the first.

## Synopsis

City on a Hill (2019-2022) is a American crime drama series created by Chuck MacLean for Showtime. Kevin Bacon plays Jackie Rohr, a veteran FBI agent whose long career has been built on a comfortable arrangement with Boston's power brokers, and Aldis Hodge plays Decourcy Ward, a District Attorney who arrives from Brooklyn determined to clean up the city. Their uneasy partnership begins with a case against a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown, and the investigation keeps widening until it threatens to expose the whole city's criminal justice system. Jonathan Tucker and Mark O'Brien appear among the principal players tied to the neighborhood's crime world, while Jill Hennessy and Sarah Shahi add domestic and professional pressure on the leads. The show runs three seasons and twenty-six episodes in a case-driven, serialized format, with each season's investigation building toward larger reckonings. Set in early 1990s Boston, its rain-soaked streets, Irish-American family loyalties and back-room deals give it a brooding, morally compromised atmosphere. Its tone is gritty and tense, with a sense of institutional dread and a cost to every decision. Fans of The Wire, Boardwalk Empire and The Departed will find resonance in its portrait of a city where law and crime share the same rooms.

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