From filmmakers Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo Reservation Dogs is a dramatic comedy focused on 4 Native American teenagers, their life on a reservation in Oklahoma, and their deep desire to escape to golden California.

Still in mourning from the passing of a friend a year prior to the start of the series the four friends engage in crimes to fund their California dreaming escape plan. The plan is upset by the arrival of a new teenage gang and interpersonal conflicts between the series’ protagonists.

With equal measures of ironic comedy and dramatic intensity centered on tribal life and identity Reservation Dogs is neither farce nor tragedy but rather a distorted mirror of reality. The shows wisely presents native folklore and theology neither as noble savage truth nor as ignorant superstition but with the same messy complexity that often accompanies faith, tradition, and the viewpoints of previous generations that teenagers so often disregard.

Season one has just concluded with the next already greenlit by the network. Reservation Dogs airs on FX and streams on Hulu.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,