'The Bondsman' review: Kevin Bacon the demon slayer

Kevin Bacon plays a bail bondsman killed one day on the job, only to be suddenly back among the living and working for the devil as a demon hunter in Amazon’s “The Bondsman.”

It’s not like things were going well for Hub Halloran anyway. He was a lowlife to begin with and he committed a terrible act that doomed him to this fate. Still, he has no interest in doing the devil’s work — snuffing out demons is treacherous and messy — but he’s not in a position to negotiate. “You’re only standing here now because we brought you back,” says the nice young woman named Midge (Jolene Purdy) who is his supervisor. “Think of this like a work release and I’m your parole officer.” The alternative is a fast track to a very hot place and I’m not talking about Aruba. Good thing his Earthly skills are needed at the moment.

The eight-episode series is flecked with comedy. Hub’s death, for example, is the result of a deep knife wound across the neck. Turns out, nothing a little duct tape can’t fix. A duct tape joke! And the show starts out promisingly enough thanks to Bacon’s tongue-in-cheek, wiry beef-jerky swagger. But as with so many streaming series, my complaint remains unchanged: Shoulda been a movie. In this case, it probably could have been something along the lines of 2009’s “Zombieland,” which I didn’t even like that much, but at least it hangs together as a story with propulsion.

There are wayward demons wandering around terra firma in human form, it seems, and the devil would like them obliterated so they can be sent back into his welcoming arms. As far as his lower-level minions are concerned, Lucifer himself is like the unseen CEO of any conglomerate: Somewhere doing something, while mid-level managers and their subordinates ensure the day-to-day work gets done, quotas and all.

That’s a great conceit — Hell as a corporate nightmare and pyramid scheme — and it’s too bad the show doesn’t develop that idea further because it’s funny! Just in case Hub has any conscience-stricken moments, he’s informed that “demons nowadays first kill their victim, then possess them — helps them work around any kind of exorcism wrinkles.” So Hub is free to blast and bash away without any pangs of guilt that he’s also finishing off the previous owner of said body. But nobody else knows this; by all appearances, it just looks like he’s going on a murder spree. So he better not get caught.

His mom (the great Beth Grant) happens to be sitting next to him as Midge lays out the details of his new line of work, and somehow she takes it in stride. Later she says: Tell me the truth, did you die? “Yeah,” comes the casual reply, “I think maybe I did.” Before you know it, mom becomes his admin and sidekick. Another fun idea that isn’t developed enough. Hub arms himself with only a gun or two, which rarely does the trick. A chainsaw through the head? More effective. When he’s successful, the mangled corpse bursts into flames and heads back to you-know-where.

From left: Kevin Bacon as Hub Halloran and Jolene Purdy as Midge in “The Bondsman.” (Tina Rowden/Amazon)

Eventually Hub’s ex-wife Maryanne (Jennifer Nettles) and estranged teenage son Cade (Maxwell Jenkins) learn the truth about Hub and also the fact that Maryanne’s current boyfriend is the same two-faced scumbag who paid to have her ex killed in the first place.

Lacking shape and pacing, the series (created by Grainger David) is fundamentally at odds with what TV does best. It should have followed a rip roaring formula where Episode 1 had a heist-flavored sequence as we watch the gang get together and formulate a series of demon-killing strategies (Hub has no strategy, it’s just “show up and hope for the best”) and then everything thereafter could follow a monster-of-the-week template. There actually is a monster of the week, but these portions feel like afterthoughts rather than the central story. It doesn’t help that the core characters aren’t developed beyond their initial outlines. You keep waiting for the show to reveal what it’s really about.

That’s because “The Bondsman” struggles to figure out what it even is. The obvious comparison would be something like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but the show takes a long and winding road to nowhere instead. It’s a problem inherent to the ultra-short streaming seasons. The show’s genre and its episode order are at odds.