There are a lot of drama series out there right now, especially with streaming platforms gaining a lot of popularity in the world. The Mayor of Kingstown is also one such drama series; this American crime thriller series was first aired on the 14th of November 2021.
This story runs around two men, Mitch and Mike McLusky, who serve as a point of association between the people of Kingstown and the criminals in the jail. They face a lot of problems in the town, such as an increasing number of crimes, a theme of racism, and overt corruption is prominent throughout the series.
The creators of the show are Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon, working with the cast of Jeremy Renner, Dianne Wiest, Hugh Dillon, Taylor Handley, and Tobi Bamtefa as some of the main lead characters. Jeremy Renner plays the protagonist as a fixer-cop; he famously plays roles of tight-jawed cops and criminals, which he is famous for. After Hawkeye finished, people could not get enough of him and wanted more, getting their salvation from the “Mayor of Kingstown”.
Kingstown is a fictional town set up in Michigan which is a jail town seemingly isolated from the outside world, making it hard to survive and make sense of everything around them, making them feel like they need to work on their own and figure things out with increasing pressure.
But things just seem to be going downhill. There is a lot of violence that the series entails, be it the crimes occurring or the way the police solve the cases and scenes from the Kingstown Prison. Prison scenes show us a side of brutality and the lengths to which the town is deep in the pits of everything bad and wrong.
There are a lot of critics that would probably disagree with the audience review that the series is getting. When the show was first aired, people and critics were initially skeptical about whether or not this series would gain any amount of success, calling it too violent and just another Taylor Sheridan series that could not make it.
After the release of 4-5th Episode of the first season, a lot of people found themselves attracted to the storyline. They love Jeremy Renner in the series, the way he is a fixer-cop, the violence, and the various plotlines going on. People are ADDICTED.
Mayor of Kingstown (Season 2) Filming Locations
The first episode for Season Two came out on the 15th of January, 2023. As per the shooting of the series of Season 2 is concerned, the filming started in June of 2022, and they wrapped up with the complete shootings before the end of 2022. The first season of the series was filmed in Kingston, Canada, and the second was filmed in Pittsburgh for the majority of the part. They wanted the second season and its locations to be much more dynamic and uncompromised for the second season.
With the high number of fly-overs and highways that are present in season 2, Pittsburgh was the best location for shooting, and the creator, Dillon, had fallen in love with the filming area when he first saw it. Some of the filming locations are mentioned,
1. Kingston Penitentiary or Kingston Pen, Canada:
This particular place was used for the shooting of Kingstown’s Prison scenes.
2. Carrie Furnace, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
The outdoor tent camp scenes set up for the prisoners were filmed in this particular area.
3. City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
4. St.Mary’s Orthodox Ukrainian Church, New Britain:
Mayor of Kingstown (Season 2): Was Much Loved By The Fans
There is a bit of conflict based on how the audience and the critics view this show of “Mayor of Kingstown”. Looking at it from a general point of view, the writer Taylor Sheridan gets a lot of positive responses from the critics, but for this series, not so much. For Season 1, the ratings were pretty low, only about 30-32%, while the audience loved it, as mentioned before. For 2nd Season of the show, the critics gave the show a 50% rating, commenting and criticizing the amount of violence entailed in the show.
Though, the audience gives it a high rating, above 90%. The reason for the audience being enchanted by this series can not be pointed out as one specific thing but an accumulation of everything that it comprises. Several storylines are going on in the show at the same time, be it a budding romance or the violence that the critics hate. Some people do not like it as much too, but the positive responses surpass the negatives.
The story is seen by the audience as an escape from the realities of life that can get a little hard to handle for them; people can be seen to go forward to mention how they relate to the on-goings of the town, the mess that the people live in. A constant force that pulls them towards the bad and doesn’t lose its grip easily. Some people seeing the reviews of the show went on to get a subscription to the streaming platform just so they could watch this series, and well, they were not disappointed.
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