Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette plays a former addict who makes the life-changing decision to become a private investigator in new series High Desert. What the show reveals to Cat Woods is an Emmy-baiting Arquette at her comic best, despite a convoluted plot.
High Desert: Season 1
High Desert is the coming-of-age narrative that every Millennial has been waiting for. 55-year-old Patricia Arquette is the immature, irresponsible, misbehaved Peggy, who finally slams face-first into her Bad Life Choices upon her mother’s death. For the first time, Peggy has to establish a sober semblance of independence. Her siblings, Dianne (Christine Taylor) and Stewart (Keir O’Donnell), warn their wayward sister that their financial support is kaput, and they’re selling the house Peggy has been living in with their mother.
Peggy is the 50+ equivalent of a stroppy, nightmare teenager: dishevelled, dope-dealing, selfish and belligerent. Rather than the angst of teenage hormones, it’s the relentless reality of adult responsibilities that burden Peggy. After decades of caring for her elderly mother and Denny (Matt Dillon), her prison parolee ex who can’t resist a dodgy deal, she becomes an unlikely detective (or, as she labels herself, an “unpaid associate”).
Patricia Arquette (who was exceptional in David Lynch’s Lost Highway) is baiting another Emmy award. Despite the laboured plotlines and sketchily drawn side characters, the writing team is gold class—and given a second season, will hopefully shake the trying-too-hard confusion of their debut. Jennifer Hoppe-House wrote the enormously underrated Nurse Jackie, which was equal parts comedy and bleak drama in its depiction of the opiate-addicted Jackie, played by the inimitable Edie Falco (The Sopranos). Damages, starring Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, also exhibited both Hoppe-House and Nancy Fichman’s capacity for writing manipulative, complex, obsessive and irrepressible women. They’re bolstered by family-drama veteran Katie Ford (Family Ties, Desperate Housewives, Miss Congeniality).
Peggy is a hot mess and she’s exceptionally good at being a chaotic conundrum. We don’t want her to drop all her vices and ditch her loser ex, then get a proper job and triumphantly become A Proper Adult. We want her to keep screwing up and getting away with it to some degree, like Falco’s Nurse Jackie.
Andrea Riseborough’s protagonist in To Leslie was depicted in a similar scenario, even if that movie ended with a neat bow-tie ending. High Desert reminded this reviewer of another brilliant series that was ahead of the times, and sadly only lasted two seasons. Enlightened starred Laura Dern as lead protagonist Amy, a self-destructive, selfish woman who—under the auspices of spiritual enlightenment—determinedly set out to prove her newfound moral superiority over everyone who had ever undermined or hurt her.
Like Peggy in High Desert, we shouldn’t love Enlightened’s Amy and her selfish, sanctimonious mayhem, but it’s compelling.
Recent series prove viewers are ready for women older than 30 to reveal the truth of middle age life (not ‘The Real Housewives’ version). Peggy’s truth is idiosyncratic, granted, but thoroughly entertaining. Not many of us can relate to living in a luxury condo, or being raided by the federal police (forcing guests to grab armfuls of hash to urgently flush down the toilets and crush down sinkholes).
Peggy’s comeback—of a sort—is a tumult of hilarity, heartbreak and unforgettable one-liners. She blessedly remains a vice-ridden mess, even as a newly minted private investigator (“You’re a phoenix, baby!” Denny tells her).
“I’m a natural detective,” she assures the town’s inept local PI Bruce (Brad Garrett). She makes a good case—nobody can sniff out a scam better than a scammer, and nobody knows a hustle like a hustler. If anyone is going to solve a dirty crime, it’s someone with a well-cultivated knowledge of the local criminal networks. Peggy’s made for this.
“Be here Monday morning at 9am,” Bruce demands. “I don’t get up before 11,” she replies.
High Desert puts a flawed, relatable protagonist in the centre of family and social chaos and lets them muddle their way through, surrounded by absurd and lovable family, friends and colleagues. This is a series that has one foot in nostalgia and another dead centre in 2023.
Patricia Arquette acts her butt off as Peggy. With her Farrah Fawcett peroxide blonde hairdo, oversized aviators and old-school glamour, Peggy is desperately trying to live a Hollywood life on a Happy Meal budget. Arquette’s Peggy is the pearl in an otherwise pretty bland oyster of a series. The plot—including Rupert Friend’s idiotic Guru Bob—is too busy to let any of the other characters really flesh out their personalities. Watch it for Arquette, her covetable wardrobe and her exceptional capacity for physical comedy.
