Lights, camera, murder: Catch ‘Get Shorty’ on Showmax now

Season 3 of Get Shorty, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s classic novel, is now streaming first on Showmax. 

About Get Shorty season 3

Miles Daly (Emmy winner Chris O’Dowd from Bridesmaids), muscle for a Nevada crime ring, is feeling… unfulfilled. The trial separation with his wife is looking less and less like a trial; he can’t tell his kid what he does for a living; and work is … well, less than glamorous. So when he travels to Hollywood to collect a debt, and leaves with a screenplay, he decides he’s ready for a career change. 

“When you think of stuff Chris O’Dowd’s done, it’s all kind of warm and cuddly,” says his co-star, three-time Emmy winner Ray Romano (Bad Education, The Big Sick), who plays washed-up producer Rick Moreweather. “But you see him in this role and he’s got to be intense. He’s got to be dangerous. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but he nails it. I’m very impressed how this guy, who I remember from Bridesmaids as the one sweet guy in the movie, can do both sides. You root for him in this. He’s ruthless, forceful and dangerous, but you still like him.” 

If O’Dowd was caught off guard by the sex symbol label Bridesmaids earned him (famously referring to himself as ‘more of a spoon symbol’), his Get Shorty tough guy called for some deep digging. “It was something I hadn’t really done before, so that was exciting,” O’Dowd says, adding, with characteristic self-deprecating humour: “I don’t get to be very manly very often, and it felt like a manly part.”

“Any time where I have to be very intimidating, it probably doesn’t come very naturally to me,” O’Dowd says, “so those are the scenes that I find the most challenging.” 

To prepare for the role, O’Dowd says he drew on “something that somebody said to me. They said, ‘Getting hit isn’t the worst thing in the world.’ Once you realize that, you go into everything kind of fearless.  So I did some boxing for the role, just to feel how that would be. And it’s true. I mean, it does hurt, but it means that you can walk right up to someone knowing, I’m close enough that they’re not gonna have a swing. Any swing that they could hit me with from here isn’t gonna hurt me, so I’ve got nothing to worry about. And that kind of power shift is helpful.”

Of his character, Miles, O’Dowd says, “He doesn’t like killing people. He doesn’t mind beating people, but he’s not really a killer.” But, he cautions, “That doesn’t mean that, in the course of our story, he won’t do it.”

All the reasons to watch Get Shorty

The New York Times says, “O’Dowd is a delight,” while Entertainment Weekly adds, “Ray Romano is terrific.”

The two Emmy winners are really all the reasons you need to watch Get Shorty, but the series happens to have everything else going for it too, including grit to spare.

“Get Shorty is Hollywood meets organized crime,” says Romano. “And you know what goes with that: sex and violence and blood.” 

Leonard’s 1990 New York Times best-selling novel also inspired the Golden Globe-winning 1995 film with John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito and Rene Russo, but here, Romano says, “The tone is different. It is darker and more intense, but still infuses comedy and quirkiness.”

“It’s all-new characters,” O’Dowd explains. “It’s new stories. And of course, because it’s a TV show, there are a lot more stories.”

Get Shorty comes to Showmax from Epix, the youngest of the US’s major premium cable TV channels, which has brought us great shows like 2020 Black Reel and Image Awards Best Drama nominee Godfather of Harlem and Perpetual Grace, 2019’s show of the year, according to  Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin.  

As The Hollywood Reporter puts it, Get Shorty is “a fantastic send-up of Hollywood… one of TV’s best-kept (or hardest to find) secrets.” 

Look out for appearances from the likes of Oscar nominee Felicity Huffman (Transamerica, Desperate Housewives, American Crime), MTV Movie Award winner Heather Graham (The Hangover, Austin Powers), Screen Actors Guild winner Dean Norris (Breaking Bad), and Oscar-winning legend Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine, Argo), whose son Adam Arkin (The Americans, Sons of Anarchy) is one of the directors – and himself a three-time Emmy nominee.  

Created, written and produced by Davey Holmes (Shameless, Damages), Get Shorty has an 8.2/10 rating on IMDb and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critic’s consensus praises the show’s “slick production values … complemented by its seasoned cast’s chemistry”. 

“Mr. Leonard would surely be pleased with how Davey Holmes, the show’s creator, has appropriated signature Leonardesque touches – deadpan humour; casually deployed violence; incongruous eloquence,” says The New York Times. Rolling Stone says it’s “scrappy, funny and fast on its feet, zipping from mob violence to low-life banter”; Los Angeles Times says it’s “well-made and beautifully played”; and TV Guide calls it “bloody terrific”. 

Watch: The official trailer for Get Shorty season 3