The secret sauce on 'Mayor of Kingstown' is a deep roster of quality actors

Every show has an "it" factor. Something that lifts all of it up.

If there’s one thing I can’t avoid in my writing, it’s constant comparisons to food. Maybe it’s the fact that I am quietly hungry 24 hours a day, or the tiny possibility that entertainment and food are too closely related to not be linked in every third paragraph, or sentence.

But truly and honestly, there’s no pun intended when I tell you “Mayor of Kingstown” is a juicy fucking televisions show. For instance, I’d pick Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon’s show up all together, dip it Au Jus, and just eat it up. There’s flavor here, folks.

Sheridan is NEVER afraid of flavor when it comes to his casting. Like many genuine creators, he likes working with the same talent on multiple projects. Dillon wears two hats on the Paramount Plus series, which returned for a second season tonight, playing a cop on the drama series in addition to helping create it. He was also a player on “Yellowstone,” and played a ruthless oil rig mercenary in Sheridan’s written and directed snow classic, “Wind River.”

“Mayor of Kingstown” has a lot of that gritty tenacity that the Jeremy Renner-Elizabeth Olsen star vehicle rode high on, giving off a very lived-in aesthetic with its characters early on. It also has Renner, anchoring the story as a power broker in a seedy fictional Michigan town.

Mike McLusky fixes problems that the police and local gangs could draw blood over, keeping the peace in an alliance that runs through the prison system and actual mayor. My dad asked what’s his job, and my response was a Ray Donovan/Michael Clayton hybrid.

But Sheridan and Dillon pepper the entire roster of this show with acting gems. Quality talent like Taylor Handley, the younger cop McLusky brother. Kyle Chandler had a small role in Season One as the elder McLusky brother. Dianne Wiest gives a powerhouse performance as the McLusky matriarch, also an employee at the prison.

“Wind River” and “Yellowstone” fans will recognize James Jordan. He was the awful oil rig mercenary who raped the murder victim lying at the center of the film. It’d be hard to forget his chilly demise at the hands of Renner’s tracker. He played a cop on the Kevin Costner-led show, and portrays a prison guard on “Kingstown.”

Rob Kirkland’s Captain Walter is a rock that even the McLuskys can’t move too far, a conflict that formulates in Season Two. Hamish Allan-Headley makes for a charismatic cop in his limited screen time, while Emma Laird haunts you with her eyes while making you clinch the teeth at her beauty.

Elizaveta Neretin set the internet on fire last year where her Vera performed a memorable sequence in the pilot. Like Chandler, she only makes a fleeting appearance, but it stays with you. Pha’rez Lass’s prison alpha comes on strong towards the end of Season One. Aiden Gillen could read a random phone book page and add conviction. There’s too many great actors to name in one article.

Out of all the relationships and top flight acting on the show, it’s the unique bond between Renner’s McLusky and the alpha drug dealer in Kingstown, Tobi Bamtefa’s Deverin Washington, aka “Bunny,” that comes off the most refreshing, and entertaining.

The genesis of their relationship runs the gauntlet from holding guns at each other’s heads to talking about the constellation of stars while smashing a couple tall boys. McLusky’s pull in the prison and local law enforcements aids Bunny’s drug operation and connection with certain inmates. They’re only friends through a peaceful alliance, one that gets shaken hard in the pilot episode, growing and evolving as the season carries on.

It’s unconventional, deftly hilarious, and honestly told. Those descriptions fit a show that sets another foundation of stone in Sheridan’s takeover in both film and television. It’s the latter that he’s looking to make a long-ranging dent in, and “Mayor of Kingstown” is a big notch on the belt of high quality television.

It’s further proof that great television shows aren’t really star-driven; they run on elite ensembles, even ones with Jeremy Renner at the front.

Yes, it’s worth a P+ subscription.