Killjoys - Season 1

John Jaqobis (Aaron Ashmore), Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen) and D'avin Jaqobis (Luke Macfarlane)

In the distant future, a particular subset of humanity is settling a solar system called the Quad, after the four variably habitable worlds it hosts: the planet Qresh and the moons of Arkyn, Westerly and Leith. Owned almost in its entirety by the Nine ruling families of the Company, the Quad is policed by a mixture of private and corporate security and the agents of the Reclamation Apprehension Coalition*, known as Killjoys.

Dutch and her partner John are a successful Killjoy team, whose relatively simple lives become complicated when John uses Dutch's name to pick up a kill warrant, in order to rescue his wayward brother, brooding ex-soldier D'avin. In addition to putting them on the RAC's shit list, this draws the attention of Dutch's former tutor, the mysterious Khlyen. At the same time, political tension in the Quad ramps up as the Nine look for a way to weasel out of their promise that any family holding down clean jobs in the industrial hellhole of Westerly for seven generations will be granted a land claim on the pastoral, upper middle class idyll of Leith.

Killjoys pitches in as a pretty basic post-Firefly sci-fi actioner, but over the course of the first season develops a sophisticated world distinguished by the symbiotic polity of the Quad, and an emergent conspiracy which plunges the characters into the heart of a conspiracy engineered by the supposedly neutral body they are sworn to serve. The interdependence of Qresh and its moons serves as a justification for the planet of hats set-up, with Qresh the upper class paradise, Westerly its dependent slum, Leith its wannabe suburb/Old South, and Arkyn a scarred wasteland of mystery.

The characters are not finely drawn, but then there's always a pay off when a series is working with a ten episode order and the performers work what they're given. John is the technician and genuine decent sort (when he agrees to take a warrant as a favour to a prostitute, Dutch tells him 'you have to stop being friends with everyone you sleep with; it's weird') while Dutch and D'avin are different kinds of enigmatic badass; she a lethal close-up fighter rejecting her past, he a soldier whose memories were taken from him.

Definitely worth a look, and I'll be following Season 2 starting this month.

* RAC, pronounced 'rack'; never ar-ay-cee, probably because the British lead actress pointed out it could never be taken seriously in the UK.