The Bondsman is coming to boost some hell on Prime Video. The horror-comedy collection, which premieres in full on Thursday (April 3), options Kevin Bacon as Hub Halloran, a divorced ex-musician-turned-bondsman who’s murdered in chilly blood however will get introduced again from the useless to do the satan’s bidding. As he hunts down demons who escaped from the netherworld and now roam the Earth, his estranged household is steadily ensnared within the mayhem.
The Southern gothic-tinged collection is gory, wild, and infrequently wickedly hilarious, and it has a surprisingly regular heartbeat within the unique songs co-created by Bacon and Jennifer Nettles, the lead vocalist for Sugarland-turned-actress who stars as his still-beloved ex-wife Maryanne. Not solely do they carry out songs they wrote collectively in character (in Hub’s case, in flashbacks), however in addition they recorded and can launch a soundtrack with much more show-inspired numbers referred to as The Bondsman: Hell and Again, dropping someday after the present premieres.
Bacon, who’s in a people band along with his brother Michael, was initially hesitant concerning the notion of bringing his two skilled ventures collectively for the collection.
“I’ve by no means actually needed to attempt to mix these two simply to shoehorn music into one thing that I used to be doing as an actor, solely as a result of I believe that it has the potential to type of cheapen each of them, each of which I take fairly critically,” he instructed TV Insider. Nevertheless, he discovered that writing songs and performing them in character helped elucidate sure parts of his character. “I’d be writing songs from my character’s viewpoint of 15 or 20 or 25 years earlier — as a result of he hasn’t picked up a guitar since he broke up along with his spouse — and that appeared like … if nothing else, an important character train. It’s the final word backstory or ride-along for him to truly write a tune that’s about what you had been feeling as that character.”
The casting of Nettles as Maryanne, a nightclub singer who’s elevating their teen son in what was once the household enterprise, helped the method alongside in a giant manner.
“Jennifer was forged, not due to her nice singing voice or nice writing abilities or her historical past with nation music however as a result of she was the very best individual for the position,” Bacon defined. “Immediately, we began speaking about writing stuff collectively, and we wrote a tune. Then we wrote a pair extra once we had been down in Georgia, and I wrote one with my brother… we ended up with all these tunes, three of that are within the present, however the remainder of them, we determined to file as a result of Jen mentioned, ‘We have to get these down.’ And we ended up with what I believe is a fairly cool file.”
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Maxwell Jenkins, who performs their son Cade, discovered stepping right into a recording sales space with Nettles for a key scene to be “daunting,” however he relished the chance to be surrounded by so many different actor-musicians within the forged. “I by no means actually had the chance to bridge [music and acting] in a undertaking, particularly to this diploma the place it’s such an integral a part of the story and the household dynamic that now we have,” he mentioned. “It was a dream come true for positive.”
Beth Grant, who performs Hub’s mom Kitty, a raucous lady who’s decided to guard her son — even from the underworld — and see his household united, additionally discovered to play an instrument for the collection: “I’ve been studying to play the autoharp … It truly is a wonderful instrument,” she mentioned.
As central because the soundtrack is, after all, The Bondsman remains to be a darkish demon-hunting story before everything, and what units the present aside from others of its ilk is the daring genre-blending that’s in play all through.
“What makes the present unique and distinctive is that style mashup that you just’ve by no means seen earlier than in some other type of present. We’ve seen demon hunter type of exhibits earlier than, advert nauseam, however you’ve by no means seen that mixed with a household dramedy. You’ve by no means seen that mixed with a rustic music angle, or Appalachian noir, or on this setting,” showrunner Erik Oleson added. “We had totally different sorts of dials the place we needed to create this escapist mash-up the place you will have horror, you will have all these different parts, however you additionally don’t know whether or not you’re gonna snort, you don’t know whether or not you’re gonna scream… Perhaps I watch a household do a jam-out session on a porch; perhaps you’re gonna see Kevin Bacon plunge a chainsaw by way of a demon’s face. I don’t know! That’s the enjoyable of the present.”
Additionally distinctive? The more and more zany demonic creatures featured all through, which give the collection an episodic procedural-style really feel as Hub and his helpers observe them down. Oleson, who govt produced the collection from a script first written by Grainger David, went to nice lengths to create creatures that had been distinctive for The Bondsman‘s menagerie of hellish demons.
“I seemed into Dante. I seemed into demonology books. I seemed into the gods of Wiki. And I then determined to simply make up the demons,” he defined. “I needed to create our personal unique variations and named them demons that gave the impression of they had been actual demons. However I believe a part of the enjoyable of the present is that we’ve created our personal mythology.”
The Bondsman, Collection Premiere (all episodes), Thursday, April 3, Prime Video