--- title: "Terriers" year: 2010 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/terriers" fi1m_score: 82 critics_score: 73 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-17T12:55:51.929622+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:56:01.790218+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Terriers (2010) Created by Ted Griffin · 45m · MPA TV-MA · Crime, Drama, Comedy **Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 73 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Two unlicensed detectives, one battered truck, and a great deal more sadness than the theme tune lets on > Ted Griffin’s one-season series looks like a lark about two skint men in a pickup and turns out to be a proper noir about debt, drink and what a beach town lets a rich man get away with. Thirteen episodes, and very few of them are wasted. ## Synopsis A beach town in southern California. Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) runs an unlicensed private detective business out of a pickup truck with his friend Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James), taking the small, badly paid cases nobody else wants. Britt lives with Katie Nichols (Laura Allen), who knows less about his working day than she thinks. Hank’s ex-wife Gretchen (Kimberly Quinn) is about to marry somebody else, and Detective Mark Gustafson (Rockmond Dunbar) still takes his calls. A job for Mickey Gosney (Gareth Williams) looks like an afternoon’s work and turns into something with money behind it, and a man who does not want two skint detectives asking questions. ## Review Ted Griffin has made a private-eye series in which the private eyes have no licence, no office and no money. Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) and Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James) take the jobs nobody else wants, in a beach town where everyone knows Hank and nobody quite trusts him, and they are paid, when they are paid, in cash and favours. For the first episode or two this looks like a pleasant hour about two men bickering in a truck. It is a good deal better than that, and the tagline, they’ll solve anything for the right price, is the show quietly making fun of itself. The whole thing rests on Logue and Raymond-James, and it can take the weight. Logue plays Hank as a man who has read the end of his own story and is not in a hurry to get there: slow, dry, watchful, quick with a lie and slower with the truth. Raymond-James gives Britt a boy’s eagerness that keeps curdling into something more worried, and he is the one who wants the business to be real. They interrogate as a double act, one asking the question and the other already answering it, and the banter is written so that it sounds unrehearsed and tells you something about the case every time. We laughed a lot in the first hour, mostly at the two of them talking over each other, and then a scene of Hank alone at a kitchen table stopped the laugh dead. That is the show’s method, and it repeats it without ever quite letting us see it coming. It is shot flat and bright, in the sort of noon light that shows the dirt on everything. Bungalows, chain-link, a pier, a bar that opens early, a truck that would not pass an inspection. There is no attempt to make any of it handsome, and the effect is that when a rich man’s house does appear it looks like a foreign country. The theme is a jaunty thing with guitar and whistling that promises a caper each week. By episode six we were slightly tired of it; by episode ten we understood it was a joke at Hank’s expense, and rather a sad one. Tim Minear produces, and the writing room, which includes Shawn Ryan, Angela Kang, Leslye Headland and Phoef Sutton, keeps the two halves of the show in balance. Each week there is a small case, and running underneath is the larger business from the pilot, which grows in ways we will not describe. Clark Johnson, John Dahl, Adam Arkin and Rian Johnson are among the directors, and the series has the sense to let them shoot people talking in rooms rather than reaching for a set piece it cannot afford. The supporting cast is written with more care than the format usually allows. Laura Allen’s Katie is a proper person with her own wants, not a girlfriend waiting at home, and Kimberly Quinn plays Gretchen as a woman who still likes Hank and has quite reasonably decided that is not enough. Jamie Denbo’s Maggie Lefferts gets some of the best lines. Rockmond Dunbar’s Gustafson watches Hank the way you watch a friend you have already given up on twice. It has faults. Two or three of the middle episodes are thin, cases that exist to fill the hour while the larger story waits, and the man behind the conspiracy is a familiar sort of villain in a familiar sort of suit. The budget shows, and not always to the show’s advantage. And there is one season of thirteen episodes and no more, so a story built to keep going has to make do with the ending it was given. Against the standard of the down-at-heel detective, [*The Rockford Files*](https://film.one/tv/the-rockford-files) (1974) and Altman’s [*The Long Goodbye*](https://film.one/film/the-long-goodbye) (1973), it holds up well: the same broke, decent men, the same suspicion that the rich are the real criminals and the police mostly agree. By the last two episodes we were properly anxious for two people who spend a good part of the series being irritating, and we had not expected to be. Give it three episodes. If the truck and the whistling have not won you by then, it is not for you, and if they have, you will be sorry there is only the one season. *Fi1m score 82, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **Vulture** (80/100, inferred): The critic finds Terriers initially baffling as a standard procedural but discovers after a few episodes that it is actually smart noir with a dark conspiracy arc. They single out its serious treatment of characters' moral lives, the strong ensemble cast led by Donal Logue, and its California charm as reasons to watch. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2010/10/tv_review_the_stealthy_noir-y.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter** (70/100, inferred): The show is not headed for greatness but makes the best of things with witty writing, light tone, satisfying tempo, and a well-drawn sense of place, driven by strong casting especially Donal Logue and good chemistry. It is a pleasing cops-and-robbers story that satisfies fans of the form without aiming for the heights of more ambitious series. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/terriers-tv-review-29954/) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (70/100, inferred): The series is an odd but mostly good buddy dramedy about small-time detectives, with a tone reminiscent of an independent film that drags viewers through nuanced twists despite a low-concept premise. It succeeds through atmosphere, breezy chemistry between leads, and a willingness to be messy and melancholy rather than high-stakes or flashy. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/tv/features/terriers-1117943424/) - **Collider**, Brendan Bettinger (70/100, inferred): The review finds that Terriers keeps FX's strong 2010 streak of new series alive with a strong balance of procedural cases and an overarching conspiracy plot. It singles out the central friendship and banter between the two leads, along with the lead performances, for particular praise. [Read](https://collider.com/terriers-review-season-one-fx-donal-logue/) ## Details - **Created by:** Ted Griffin - **Creator:** Ted Griffin - **Director:** Adam Arkin, Ted Griffin, Tucker Gates, Michael Zinberg, Rian Johnson, John Dahl, Clark Johnson, Guy Ferland - **Writer:** Shawn Ryan, Nicholas Griffin, Phoef Sutton, Jed Seidel, Leslye Headland, Angela Kang, Tim Minear, Ted Griffin - **Producer:** Tim Minear - **Cast:** Donal Logue as Hank Dolworth; Michael Raymond-James as Britt Pollack; Laura Allen as Katie Nichols; Kimberly Quinn as Gretchen Dolworth; Jamie Denbo as Maggie Lefferts; Rockmond Dunbar as Detective Mark Gustafson; Noel Fisher as Adam Fisher; Shangela Laquifa Wadley as Mikaela - **Runtime:** 45m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 8 September 2010 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama, Comedy ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AU, CA, GB, NZ. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Rockford Files* (1974): The original broke, decent detective in a trailer, paid late and punched often - *The Long Goodbye* (1973), Fi1m 86: Altman lets Marlowe shuffle through Los Angeles in the same flat, unforgiving light — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-long-goodbye.md) - *Cutter's Way* (1981), Fi1m 82: Two damaged friends decide a rich man is guilty; nobody thanks them for it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cutters-way.md) - *Justified* (2010), Fi1m 87: Another small-town lawman series where the talk does most of the work — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/justified.md) - *The Nice Guys* (2016): Shane Black’s mismatched pair blunder through a case with the same bruised comedy --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/terriers