Tivoli is the Backdrop for a New Thriller

How do you decide what new TV show to watch? There are hundreds on networks, cable and streaming services right now, and if you count shows that have ended production but are still available online, the number must be in the thousands. When I took a few weeks off work recently for a medical procedure, I asked for suggestions from friends and family, but no two people recommend the same thing.

If you need a new show, you could pick one with a local connection. “Eyewitness,” a new thriller on the USA Network, is set in Tivoli, N.Y. It’s actually filmed in rural Ontario in a town that looks nothing like the Hudson Valley — the description on the USA website describes the location as the “dreary middle of nowhere,” and it’s shot accordingly in desaturated colors. But there are Dutchess County buses, Poughkeepsie police cars and Red Hook High School, so that’s fun.

The show — which is based on the Norwegian series “Øyevitne” — is relentlessly bleak and dark. Two teenage boys sneak into a cabin and start making out, but are interrupted by a car full of scary-looking guys who break into the cabin and start shooting each other. Three die, but the fourth spots one of the teens, Philip (Tyler Young), who only escapes because his friend, Lukas (James Paxton), whacks the bad guy with a frying pan. Terrified to admit why they were in the cabin (couldn’t they have just said they were getting drunk?), they deny seeing anything, which is tough because Philip’s foster mom, Helen Torrance (Julianne Nicholson), is the sheriff investigating the crime. 

After a slow start, things get complicated quickly: Helen has a mysterious past in Buffalo, and a kindly husband, Gabe (Gil Bellows), who is more comfortable having a foster kid than she is. Her investigation of the murders is hampered by FBI agent Camilla Davis (Tattiawna Jones), who doesn’t want to reveal that one of the dead guys was an informant, because he was married to her sister, who also seems to have something to do with a big heroin dealer, whose runaway teenage daughter is caught up with the scary bad guy who survived, who is stalking Philip and Lukas, who is really upset because his dad is making him help with the turkey hunt. 

And then there is the Twist, and the other Twist. Lots of characters and plot lines are introduced and then seemingly abandoned, though with a total of 10 episodes in the season, presumably they’ll all be wrapped up eventually. 

The show could explore any one of the relationships it has set up: the two boys and their emerging gay identities; the wary buddy-cop connection between Helen and Camilla; the complexity of a newly married couple taking in a troubled teen with a drug-addicted mother or even the somewhat lighthearted relationship between Helen and her partner, Tony (Matt Murray), who almost functions as comic relief, in that he smiles once in awhile. 

By the end of the third episode, the show seems more inclined to focus in a less interesting direction: the pathology of a psycho. Too bad.

The standout in the large cast is Nicholson. As a tenacious cop, loving wife and tentative mother, she has a delicate gravity that doesn’t get too weighed down by the glumness around her. I hope the show spends more time on her story going forward.