- "I want to rip out the machinery in this bullshit city."—Jackie Rohr
City on a Hill is a crime drama series that premiered in 2019 on Showtime. It was cancelled in 2022 after three seasons.
Boston, the early 1990s. Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) is a mercurially corrupt FBI agent who lives fast in both his public and personal life. Decourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge) is an ambitious and idealistically minded Assistant District Attorney who wants to uproot the system. Despite their differing worldviews and methods, the two men finds themselves thrust together during an investigation into an armored car robbery and form an uneasy alliance to challenge the city's criminal justice system.
City on a Hill contains examples of:
- 0% Approval Rating: After flipping and getting Frankie killed, Jimmy becomes despised and blackballed by everyone in Charlestown. No one except his girlfriend and Jackie show up for his memorial service after Cathy kills him.
- The '90s: The series is set in the earlier part of the decade, when violent crime in Boston (and other major American cities) was a huge problem. Season 1 is set in 1992, Season 2 and 3 in 1993.
- Abusive Parents:
- Decourcy's father was a prominent civil rights activist who also badly beat his children, which eventually resulted in Decourcy needing a glass eye.
- When he was younger, Jackie's mother repeatedly slammed a door on his fingers after leaving it open one too many times. He responded by burning the house down.
- Jenny was sexually abused by her father, and her already-emotionally abusive mother looked the other way.
- Anyone Can Die:
- Frankie Ryan and Hank Signa in Season 1.
- Jimmy Ryan in Season 2.
- Awful Wedded Life: Jackie and Jenny's marriage is dysfunctional (to put it mildly), where they fight almost constantly, along with both (especially Jackie) cheating.
- Bank Robbery: The first season deals with Jackie and Decourcy investigating the aftermath of a deadly armored car heist; Frankie and Jimmy Ryan belong to the robbery crew.
- Broken Pedestal: Siobhan was inspired to enter law school by community activist Grace Campbell. That inevitably changes when Grace's sons are implicated in a gang shooting that kills a child, one of them shoots her (during an attempt on Decourcy) and triggers her miscarriage, and Grace decides to shield said sons from the cops.
- Category Traitor: Jimmy becomes this to Charlestown after he flips to the Feds.
- Cowboy Cop: Tony Suferin of the Boston Police, who summarily executes Anton Campbell during a standoff.
- Dirty Cop:
- When he was an FBI agent, Jackie abused his position for kickbacks from criminals, enjoying Hookers and Blow particularly.
- In Season 3, it's revealed that several Boston Police detectives have become involved with drug dealing, to the point that one murders another because they're rivals.
- Dirty Coward: Sinclair Dryden, seeing that his trial is going against him, takes drugs and deliberately puts himself into a coma rather than be punished, preferring that. Jackie rebukes his comatose body while in the hospital for it.
- Downer Ending: Season 1 ends with Hank Signa dying in the armored car sting thanks to Jackie's antics, Decourcy being scapegoated for the fiasco (which leads to him declaring war on Jackie), Frankie Ryan also dying in the sting, and his brother Jimmy being ostracized by his family and the rest of Charlestown for ratting Frankie out to the Feds.
- Enemy Mine: Jackie and Decourcy are willing to put aside their differences if they are working on the same case. Once the case is done, they go right back to despising each other till the next time they need to cooperate.
- Establishing Character Moment: Sinclair Dryden is introduced raping a young woman while she's unconscious. It's later shown she's his daughter's friend who stayed over at their house that night, and he drugged her wine. His wife also knows about it, and doesn't care beyond insuring he's covered it up, showing them both to be just awful people, indicating it's hardly the first time he did it either.
- Good Shepherd: Father Doyle is a kind-hearted priest who tries to do right, and even goes against Church teachings when he feels they're wrong, in a God Before Dogma manner. Zigzagged, however, as he also embezzles money for the IRA, which at the time was frequently involved with deadly bombings.
- Happily Married: Decourcy and Siobhan have a loving, stable marriage with both supportive of the other, even if they disagree at times.
- Hot for Preacher: Jenny develops a mutual attraction to Father Doyle, and they have sex.
- Irish Priest: Father Doyle is originally from Northern Ireland though he moved to Boston for an escape from The Troubles (it's set in 1992), with a strong Irish accent.
- Long-Lost Relative: Jenny learns of her long lost half-brother only well into adulthood, as he was born due to a secret affair her father had.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Jackie learns the hit on him had been ordered by Father Doyle. He immediately suspects it's due to Doyle wanting Jenny, Jackie's wife, all to himself. Doyle says it was in revenge for Jackie harming him and the attack wasn't actually meant to be fatal.
- Papa Wolf: Do not mistreat or victimize Jackie's daughter if you value your life. Clay Roach found this out the hard way. Even when Jackie likes her new boyfriend Faust, he still punches him in the stomach, ostensibly to see if he punches back and prove he can protect her.
- Parental Incest: Jenny was sexually abused by her father.
- Police Brutality: A case which closes the second season and goes into the third involves Tony Suferin, an officer of the Boston Police Department, as he's charged and tried for wrongly shooting a suspect against orders by his superior. He's convicted, surprising everyone as that quite rarely happens, with Decourcy taking note of how many black men have been killed by white police and civilians with impunity.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: Like a lot of white working-class Bostonians, Jackie expresses racist attitudes towards African-Americans, which affects his tenuous partnership with Decourcy.
- Rape and Revenge:
- Jackie hunts down his daughter Bernadette's rapist and shoots him dead.
- Jenny finally confronts her father about his molesting her, then she pushes him down the stairs in revenge. This results in him suing her for the assault.
- Rape as Backstory: The main thing we learn of Jenny's past was that her father had molested her.
- Rape as Drama:
- In Season 1 Bernadette's gang rape is a subplot, with her father Jackie going on the warpath over it.
- Season 3 shows that Jackie's new employer Sinclair Dryden is a rapist (he drugs and rapes his own daughter's friend, who is later Driven to Suicide over it after he tries gaslighting her into believing nothing happened, with his daughter learning about what took place then angrily confronting him about it). Jackie then starts to work with Decourcy, finding more women Dryden raped and building a case to bring him down.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Jackie may be a slimy guy, but rape is something even he doesn't look away from, as demonstrated when he blows the brains out of the man who raped Jackie's daughter. Later, after learning his employer Sinclair Dryden is a Serial Rapist, Jackie starts working to bring him down and says that he can't be bought in this case. It likely helps that both his wife and daughter have been raped before themselves.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Jackie lampshades the fact that he could live a very comfortable life working as chief of security for Sinclair Dryden and ignoring Dryden's criminal activity. However, Dryden committed rape, one of the few crimes Jackie cannot tolerate and Jackie vows to take him down.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Sinclair Dryden is a former FBI agent with friends in not only the Bureau but the Boston Police, and he's also close with the Suffolk County District Attorney. As a result, he is able to intimidate his victims into not pressing charges, in one case by sending a Boston Police officer as his envoy. He also bribes them not to, but his connections have more pull. It finally collapses as Jackie and Decourcy investigate.
- Serial Rapist: Jackie learns his new employer Sinclair Dryden is one, having drugged and raped a number of young women. He gets Decourcy to start building a case, finding the victims had been paid off and or intimidated into silence.
- Sexy Priest: Diarmuid Doyle is a handsome young Irish Priest who has an intense mutual attraction with Jenny.
- Shout-Out: St. Eligius Hospital is mentioned and appears.
- Too Dumb to Live: Sure Clay, gloat about what you did to Jackie's daughter even as he's sitting there, visibly seething, with a gun.
- Tragic Stillbirth: Decourcy and Siobhan lose their baby when she's shot, miscarrying as a result, which devastates the two of them.
- Trauma Conga Line:
- Season 1 had Jackie's daughter Benedetta falling into substance abuse and self-destructive behavior, which eventually leads to her being brutally gang-raped.
- Season 2 is a loooong one for Grace Campbell. First she learns that both of her sons Anton and Kelvin, who she tried to raise right, are involved in the neighborhood drug trade, with Anton leading a gang. Then her sons are implicated in a gang shooting which killed a young girl, which damages her relations with other community leaders. She resorts to stealing from her own non-profit group to secure Anton's bail money and gets arrested for her trouble, only for him to attempt a hit on Decourcy which wounds his wife (and Kelvin's lawyer) Siobhan. By the end of the season both sons are dead (Anton by a rogue cop, Kelvin being beaten to death in prison), the HUD grant she had desperately tried to secure for the neighborhood has been canceled because of the scandals, and Grace is forced to leave Boston. However, Grace still has the emotional support of the people in her community despite everything, which could be considered a silver lining for her.
- Western Terrorists: In Season 2, Jenny befriends Maeve, an Irish immigrant and a member of her church choir who eventually admits to being involved with the Irish Republican Army. What's more, Jackie eventually finds out that Father Doyle has been stealing money from the church to facilitate gun purchases for the IRA, which Jackie uses to put the priest under his thumb.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Maeve claims that she's on the run from the IRA after deserting their ranks and talks Jenny into lending her a large sum of money so she can escape to California. Jackie is convinced that Maeve is still in the IRA and is using the money for their purposes. He's right.
