J.J. Abrams series Duster is an adrenaline-fuelled homage to 1970s crime capers

It’s been more than a decade since J.J. Abrams was last actively involved in a TV series.

In an earlier era of his career, Abrams was a prolific producer and writer of shows, and had created or co-created a raft of influential series including Felicity, Alias, Lost and Fringe.

Other than an aborted attempt to launch a HBO series a few years ago (kiboshed when new management took over Warner Bros and baulked at the price tag), Abrams has been absent from the medium in which he had so many successes.

Duster is his homecoming party, and what a playful one at that. Here, there’s not a whiff of a head-tripping sci-fi mystery box but a fun-filled homage to 1970s crime capers, albeit one with a modern sensibility.

Co-created with LaToya Morgan, Duster screams with personality and verve, always moving, almost as fast as the eponymous muscle car driven by Lost alum Josh Holloway’s character.

Sometimes it’s racing with such speed, you risk losing track of all the threads, but that’s also why you have to pay attention – and why wouldn’t you when Duster gives you plenty of reasons to.

Duster is something of a Lost reunion between Abrams and Holloway, whose long wig blows in the wind with as much a subtlety as a Fabio photoshoot, but that’s not a bad thing, because this series isn’t embarrassed about being a tad over-the-top. It’s not going for grounded realism, but it deftly avoids being a parody.

Holloway’s character is Jim, a getaway driver working for a regional crime boss. His moralism is mostly neutral and you get the sense he’s in the business not out of greed or for a power-grab but because it’s just where he ended up. He’ll punch-out but he’s not looking for trouble, no matter what his swagger might suggest. What Jim exudes is effortless cool. Old mate doesn’t have to try, he just has it.

He’s not the main character though. Those honours go to Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson), a rookie FBI agent who, in the universe of a show set in 1972, just after the death J. Edgar Hoover, is the bureau’s first Black, female agent.

Nina is told she was only admitted into the organisation because Hoover had wanted to infiltrate civil rights groups and now that he’s gone, they don’t know what to do with her because, and they have no qualms telling her this, nobody wants her.

She is reluctantly assigned to the field office in Arizona because there was no other choice, not because she is valued as someone with a lot to offer. It’s the gig she wants because she has personal stakes in wanting to take down that crime boss, Saxton (Keith David), and the first thing she does is to recruit/extort Jim into turning informant.

Nina breaks rules, defies expectations and generally steps outside of the very small box in which she’s been limited because she has good instincts, even though she’s told, not unkindly, that someone like her only gets one shot at this.

Her partner, Awan (Asivak Koostachin), is an underestimated agent because of his Navajo heritage, and both discover there are also benefits to being dismissed by the establishment – few think you’re a threat so no one sees you coming.

Duster is an adrenalised riot with plenty of bar brawls, burning rubber and bad guys with terrible aim. Almost everyone is a crook, many are part of some grander conspiracy and a lot of them are racist so there’s a glee to the violence that is doled out with regularity. You may not return to a bowling alley anytime soon.

It’s not as in-your-face as, say, Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, but it’s adjacent. If they’re not next door neighbours, then at least it’s in the same post code.

It’s enough to get your blood pumping.

Duster is streaming on Max from May 15