At the Roundhouse: ‘Longmire’

While trying to avoid taking sides on the “Breaking Bad” bill and the state’s film tax credits, I admit I’m glad to hear that Season 2 of “Longmire” will be filming soon in northern New Mexico.

I’m a “Longmire” fan. I was sold the minute the grizzled, widower sheriff woke up in his cabin in the Valle Grande and went out on the porch to have a cup of coffee and take in the morning view.

Then, of course, he climbs into a battered old Bronco and heads to his office on the Las Vegas plaza, parting a herd of Valles Caldera elk along the way.

There’s a great scene when Longmire rolls the Bronco after an election-year surprise and a fine, running gag involving beer cans that in no way makes light of DWI. The sheriff is ever the good guy.

I don’t think I’ve been so happy in front of a TV since “Stoney Burke.”

The New Mexico Film Office announcement about the Season 2 production of A&E Network’s ‘Longmire” came as the “Breaking Bad” film tax credit bill landed on Gov. Susana Martinez’s desk.

Journal film writer Adrian Gomez tells me that “Longmire” has been and probably will be a beneficiary of the tax credit, which is intended to encourage TV and movie production in New Mexico.

The governor has been critical of the tax credit in the past. But on a pure entertainment score, I wonder what the first couple think personally of “Longmire” and “Breaking Bad” — the governor being a former prosecutor and First Gent Chuck Franco a riding-and-roping former deputy sheriff.

And who cares if the “Longmire” story is set in Wyoming? I see New Mexico.

As I’ve griped to Gomez many a time, I just wish they would get rid of that heavy-looking leather coat that Longmire seems wear night and day, regardless of the season. I’d feel better about it if he slept in it, too. And quit making the hardworking sheriff try to run through snow in slick-soled cowboy boots.

I do love the beat-up Bronco, though. And I think Lou Diamond Phillips does a fine job of playing Longmire’s bar-owning, unofficial crime investigator. Katee Sackhoff is good as deputy Victoria “Vic” Moretti, although Longmire novelist Craig Johnson‘s caring but coarse-mouthed big city girl would be hard to replicate fully on TV.

The TV show prompted me to read all but one of Johnson’s Longmire novels, and I think they’re pretty darn good.

I got a little tired of a friendly giant lurking out of the woods to extricate Longmire from trouble. And I’m too much of a Western chauvinist to have read the one set in Philadelphia.

But waking up in the Valle Grande? Sign me up for Season 3.