New series Duster takes inspiration from 70s B-movies and FBI's first female Black agent

Australia Broadcast Center

20-05-2025

Few people in Hollywood know how to weaponise nostalgia like JJ Abrams.
His slick updates of Star Trek and Star Wars helped usher in Hollywood's current era of the legacy reboot, where all kinds of disposable gen X trash have been retconned into hallowed cultural touchstones. (Karate Kid: Legends releases May 30.) Even Abrams's sole original film, Super 8, was a shameless love letter to Spielberg that recycled all the familiar Amblin tropes, albeit with fewer oedipal undertones.
Fast facts about Duster
What: A young FBI agent teams up with a getaway driver in the early 1970s to take down a crime organisation operating across the American Southwest.
Created by: JJ Abrams and LaToya Morgan
Starring: Josh Holloway, Rachel Hilson, Keith David
Where: Streaming weekly on Max (soon to be HBO Max, I guess)
Likely to make you feel: Like putting on an actual 70s crime movie
Six years after his latest film — 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — Abrams has returned to his TV roots with another period pastiche, accompanied by co-creator LaToya Morgan (The Walking Dead).
Duster mercifully steers away from the 80s, and instead cruises through the 70s B-movie milieu of muscle cars, dirty cops, wah wah pedals and tight getaways, all while taking inspiration from Sylvia Mathis, the first Black female FBI agent.
Rachel Hilson (Love, Victor) stars as Nina Hayes, a fresh addition to the bureau who requests an assignment in Arizona, where she has eyes on a criminal enterprise operated by Keith David's (Community) Ezra — a magnanimous family man first, and mob boss second. (If there is a reason to watch the show, it's the delight of listening to David cajole, threaten and swear in his fabulously melodic voice.)
Other agents have tried and failed to make inroads into the syndicate; Hayes's sceptical colleagues relish harassing and discrediting the young upstart, who's perceived as a mere diversity hire.
Hilson shares top billing with Josh Holloway (Lost), who exudes an unflappable, gentlemanly charm as Ezra's faithful getaway driver, Jim. His buffed red Plymouth, magnificent mane (cinematically flapping in the wind during high-speed pursuits) and taut physique are all meticulously maintained — the rest coasts by off pure vibes. When he offers a shared drink during the brief lull of a life-and-death brawl, you understand why his opponent accepts.
At the same time, Jim's habit of playing fast and loose with the law precludes him from sharing a stable life with his young daughter — and when Hayes digs up a conspiracy that hits close to home, he reluctantly becomes her ticket into his cutthroat world.
The leads share an affable, sometimes uneasy chemistry — the put-together pro and the ambitious rookie with something to prove, but situated on opposing sides of the law. Each episode reflects this dynamic by integrating procedural cop storylines with underworld dealings, their worlds overlapping as Hayes's investigation turns the heat up on Jim.
Those hoping to see white-knuckle, Bullitt-esque chases every week may feel short-changed, as the series largely trades in gunfights and fisticuffs.
Duster nonetheless gets solid mileage out of its handful of practical car stunts. There's a satisfying heft to vehicles flipping into the air, swivelling on handbrake turns and getting mangled well beyond a trip to the mechanic. The high point of the show's retro setpieces is a Fourth of July chase that sees gunfire traded with fireworks.
Yet all the charm and fast cars in the world can't outrun the pacing woes of streaming TV. You can feel the story spinning its wheels as it ekes eight 45-minute episodes out of a breezy, buddy-cop movie premise.
The stakes are raised and dispatched in a perfunctory fashion each episode. Tragic backstories, breadcrumb plotting, and perfunctory double-crosses ensure the show is rarely in a hurry. Traces of a looming conspiracy — reaching all the way to Capitol Hill — take too long to materialise.
As a throwback, Duster also fails to reignite the spark of its forebears. The dialogue is too slick for its own good, shoehorning JJ's snappy, too-clever-by-half cadence into the mouths of hard-boiled criminals and grizzled agents.
Its co-creator's fingerprints are also present in how eagerly characters gush about the pop culture of its time; barely an episode goes by without a movie poster in the background. A subplot involving one of Howard Hughes's vintage cars is a fun exception to the show's tiresome references.
What's genuinely inconceivable is how Duster was allowed to look so murky, flat and monotonous — far below the standard of 2000s network TV during Abrams's prime. Characters are dispassionately lit, turning detailed period fits into cheap-looking costumes. An excess of dusty yellows and faded blues make even the scorching American Southwest feel cool to the touch.
The irony, of course, is that the kinds of 70s cinema that Duster cribs from (the films of Hal Needham and Blaxploitation flicks, chiefly) are infinitely more stylish while having been produced for a fraction of the cost.
That filmmaking ethos was about getting every penny on screen; the streaming approach seems to assume that its audiences will be on their phones anyway.