“City on a Hill” wants to be a crime drama about the corruption that built Boston, told through the eyes of two men who can’t agree on whether to fix it or protect it. Kevin Bacon plays Jackie Rohr, an FBI veteran whose name means something in Charlestown. Aldis Hodge plays Decourcy Ward, a young DA from Brooklyn who believes the law should mean something too. The show spends three seasons trying to make that tension matter. It doesn’t always land.
The premise is strong. Set in the early 1990s, the series follows Ward as he takes on a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown. His investigation grows to touch the city’s entire criminal justice system. Rohr, who knows everyone in town, wants to keep things running the way they always have. Ward wants to change them. That’s the engine of the whole thing, and when the show commits to it, it works.
Trailer, via SHOWTIME.
The Core Pair
Bacon and Hodge carry the show. Bacon plays Rohr with a worn-in ease, the kind of man who knows the system better than anyone alive. He’s corrupt, sure, but also funny and loyal in a way that makes him hard to hate. Hodge plays Ward with a restless idealism that keeps him moving forward even when the world around him stops. Their scenes together are the best the series has to offer.
The problem is that the show keeps pulling away from them. Subplots about Ward’s ex-wife, played by Jill Hennessy, and a detective named Chris Caysen, played by Matthew Del Negro, get screen time that could have gone to the central case. Julietta Caysen, played by Catherine Ashmore Bradley, gets her own arc. None of it is bad, but none of it serves the main story as well as it should.
The Case That Should Be the Center
The armored car robbery case is the spine of “City on a Hill.” It’s supposed to be the thread that pulls the whole city apart. In practice, the show spends a lot of time on the personal lives of the investigators and the families involved, and less on the actual workings of the crime itself. By the time the case reaches its climax, it feels rushed rather than earned.
The show also keeps adding new threads about the wider criminal world of Boston. A gang war, a political fix, a missing witness — the list grows longer as the series goes on. Some of these pay off. Most don’t. The result is a show that’s constantly introducing new problems while leaving the ones it started with unresolved.
Where It Falls Short
The pacing is the biggest issue. Episodes often spend half their runtime on setup, then rush the payoff. A murder that could take an episode to investigate gets solved in a scene. A character’s betrayal that should drive a season gets explained in a conversation. The show trusts its audience to care, but it doesn’t always trust itself to earn that care.
There’s also a tonal problem. The show wants to be gritty and procedural, but it keeps leaning on comedy to keep the mood light. Bacon’s Rohr cracks jokes about his own corruption, and the show treats it as charming rather than disturbing. That’s a choice, but it blunts the impact of the story’s darker turns.
What Works Anyway
When “City on a Hill” commits, it delivers. The scenes between Ward and Rohr, where they talk past each other and slowly start to understand one another, are among the show’s strongest. The writing gives both actors room to play, and they take it. The show’s Boston is also rendered with care, full of neighborhood detail that grounds the story in a specific time and place.
The supporting cast, led by Jill Hennessy as Ward’s ex-wife and Lauren E. Banks as Siobhan Quays, also deserve credit. They’re given smaller parts but manage to leave a mark anyway.
Season by Season
| Season | Premiere Date |
|---|---|
| 1 | June 16, 2019 |
| 2 | March 28, 2021 |
| 3 | July 31, 2022 |
The Verdict
“City on a Hill” is a show with a great idea and a weak execution. Its best moments — the conversations between Ward and Rohr, the sense of a city built on secrets — are genuinely memorable. Its worst moments — the pacing, the wasted subplots, the tonal confusion — are genuinely frustrating.
It’s a show worth watching for the actors and the setting, but it’s a show that doesn’t quite live up to its own ambition. The case that should upend the city barely gets the attention it deserves. The characters that should drive the story get lost in side roads.
The show ran for three seasons, and it ended on October 27, 2022. That ending didn’t settle the score between Ward and Rohr the way it needed to. It left questions hanging instead of answers. For a show about justice and corruption, that’s a strange choice.
“City on a Hill” is a show that’s easy to recommend to anyone who loves crime dramas, but it’s a show that’s harder to recommend without reservation. It’s worth your time, but it’s not worth your full attention.
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