TO SAY Timothy Olyphant can do “a little bit of everything” would be a lie. That’s because Timothy Olyphant can, in fact, do a lot of everything. At this very moment, the 55-year-old is starring in both Max’s Full Circle—playing a troubled, wealthy father in a crime thriller mystery helmed by Steven Soderbergh—and returning to his signature role as Raylan Givens in FX’s Justified: City Primeval, a new series taking inspiration from writer Elmore Leonard’s novel City Primeval.
Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole” and novel Raylan were both inspirations for the original series. The author passed away in 2013, but his oeuvre was still where the Justified team turned to when building out Raylan’s new world in Justified: City Primeval. Leonard’s work has also been the source material for movies like Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Not exactly bad company to be in.
It takes a particular kind of skill to balance the tones present in Leonard’s work, which can go back and forth between bleak comedy and pulpy violence with a moment’s notice. But Olyphant’s work across roles and genres has always shown that he’s up to the task. Before he starred in the original Justified, Olyphant demonstrated that he had a wide range of talents. Appearances in edgy ’90s thrillers like Scream 2 and Go made him a favorite of the film community, and his first Western leading role—in HBO’s Deadwood—turned out to be a bona fide classic of the genre.
When Justified came around in 2010, he had the chance to take his lawman persona from Deadwood and build on it even more. While Olyphant is a California native, something about his cool charm and quick trigger finger just instantly felt right in the show’s contemporary Kentucky setting, and it felt right for the show’s perfect 78-episode run.
In the years since, Olyphant has continued to show off his tricks, appearing as a suburban dad in Netflix’s underrated zombie comedy Santa Clarita Diet, a ’70s band manager in Daisy Jones and the Six, and even with a quick role in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and, yes, as different kinds of cowboys in both Season 4 of Fargo and the Star Wars universe (he’s shown up in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett as Cobb Vanth).
But, look, things just feel right again with Olyphant back rocking that Raylan Givens hat. City Primeval sets him up in a brand new city, with a brand new case, and with a whole new cast of characters (including The Sandman‘s Boyd Holbrook) around him. This is something we can get used to. Maybe let’s plan on running it back every couple of years?
Below, you can make sure not to miss a single episode of Justified: City Primeval .
When is the next episode of Justified: City Primeval coming out?
Each episode of Justified: City Primeval will air on FX on Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM. The show will then hit Hulu for streaming on the Wednesday that follows. So, that being said, the next episode of Justified: City Primeval will air on August 1, and stream on Hulu on August 2.
How many episodes of Justified: City Primeval are left?
Justified: City Primeval will be 8 episodes long, and the first three of those have now been released. That means there are five weeks, and five episodes, left in the long awaited return of Justified and Raylan Givens.
Here’s the complete release schedule for Justified: City Primeval:
Episodes release on Tuesday nights, and arrive on Hulu the next day
Episode 1, “City Primeval”: Now streaming as of July 19
Episode 2, “The Oklahoma Wildman”: Now streaming as of July 19
Episode 3, “Backstabbers”: Now streaming as of July 26
Episode 4, “Kokomo”: Airing on August 1, Streaming on August 2
Episode 5, “You Good?”: Airing on August 8, Streaming on August 9
Episode 6, “Adios”: Airing on August 15, Streaming on August 16
Episode 7, “The Smoking Gun”: Airing on August 22, Streaming on August 22
Episode 8, “The Question”: Airing on August 29, Streaming on August 30
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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