South Florida isn’t an unusual place to set a detective show, especially one with a dark sense of humor. It isn’t often, however, that most of the action is set outside the bright lights and sexy beaches of Miami.
But that’s exactly what the creators of The Glades, premiering Sunday on A&E, were going for, setting the police procedural in the fictional hamlet of Palm Glade, just outside the Everglades. The inland locale scares up enough murder and mayhem to make sure that one brilliant homicide detective will be hard-pressed to ever get in a full round of golf.
That would be Jim Longworth (Matt Passmore), who relocated to the area from Chicago after an acrimonious split from that department. He’s far more interested in enjoying the area’s world-class golf courses than solving crimes, but local law enforcement isn’t about to let his expertise go to waste.
Longworth, with his confident swagger and nifty way with words, could have stepped right out of an Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel.
“He gets under your skin and gets you to reveal more than you want to,” says creator and writer Clifton Campbell. “To do that, you have to have that thing that allows you to be off-putting without putting people so off that they shut down. He’s a good-looking, charming, funny guy and you can’t help but like him even though he’s about to make your life miserable.”
When he’s not pursuing murderers or a better short game, Longworth spends much of his time trying to woo Callie (Kiele Sanchez), a medical student with a husband in prison and a 12-year-old son to support. While she and Longworth obviously have some chemistry, she keeps him at a safe distance.
Campbell grew up in an area much like Palm Glade, and was wary of the fact that the definitive portrayal of his home state came from flashy shows like Miami Vice and CSI: Miami. He knew of an entirely different Florida that wasn’t being captured, that of “murky little subcultures” that thrive inland. This was the Florida he wanted to see onscreen.
“It’s this combination of extraordinary beauty from when the planet was new, [and] also that blue-sky weird sort of vibe. Florida’s very transitory. There’s a lot of people that move in and out. It’s a pretty good place to find some oddball criminality going on.”
Photo: Credit: Matthias Clamer
