How CBS turned Northern California ‘Fire Country’ into a soap opera with pyrotechnics

“Fire Country,” which premieres Friday on CBS, is a soap opera with pyrotechnics, set among firefighters in a fictional Northern California hamlet where trees outnumber people — for now. With the state predicted to face a fourth year of drought, and fires burning hotter and faster with accelerating climate change, and the question raised not for the first time of whether people should be rebuilding towns that burned to nothing or should have been living there in the first place, it’s an odd thing to watch. Of course, firefighters always win in the end — or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the fires always lose — but the end is sometimes long in coming, with acres, structures and even lives lost.

There are other firehouse shows on the air now — “Chicago Fire,” “Station 19” — and, like, “Fire Country,” they are essentially ensemble relationship dramas set in a burning frame. The twist here is the rural setting and bringing in Cal Fire’s inmate firefighter program, around since World War II, in which, for a little pay and time off their sentence, eligible convicts live in “fire camps” and supplement the pros, clearing brush to keep wildfires from advancing.

More to the point, “Fire Country” sets up the ancient story of a returning prodigal. Here it is Bode Donovan (Max Thieriot), a name that AI could not have created better, who once held up someone at gunpoint but is clearly a good guy now. (All of the convicts seem to be well-behaved, but apart from Bode’s comical new friend Freddy, played by W. Tré Davis, none has a name or personality or more than a line or two of dialogue.) Bode also is a bit of an artist, which might become relevant later but for the moment telegraphs a sensitive nature. Unluckily for him, he finds himself sent to a fire camp in his old hometown, where there are people he wants to avoid and history he wants to bury.

Often one feels the need to see several episodes of a series to write about it, but sometimes its purpose is so clear, the assignment so obviously executed as intended, that one feels safe in imagining a whole season from a single hour. This is meat-and-potatoes small-town drama, driven by a large cast of Pretty People With Powerful Feelings and the occasional conflagration. (Just how occasional only additional episodes will tell.)

Max Thieriot stars as Bode Donovan in “Fire Country.”

(Bettina Strauss / CBS)

The principal characters, who will prove to be connected in sometimes “surprising” ways — revelations are spaced throughout the hard-working pilot — include, besides Bode, division chief Sharon (Diane Farr), who is married to fire chief Vince (Billy Burke), in whose station we find best friends Eve (Jules Latimer) and Jake (Jordan Calloway), who is dating Gabriela (Stephanie Arcila), a 14th-place Olympic diver who is deciding whether to stick around town or go back to Florida to train and who also happens to be the daughter of Manny (Kevin Alejandro), who runs the convict fire camp. There is also a dead person named Riley who is important to some of them.

A sprinkling of technical references — “Caterpillar D6N,” “10s and 18s”— tends to stand out as research rather than create a lived-in world, but that matters no more here than stray facts about the oil business or cattle ranching did in “Dallas.” The milieu offers opportunities for heroic action — Bode, described in press materials as “seeking redemption,” being the most immediately heroic among them — but it’s a setting more than a subject.

“Fire Country” is too much of a piece with other shows of its ilk to feel new and exciting, but that ilk — the prime-time, location-based action-soap — has made hay for decades. Such shows don’t need to be brilliant as long as they’re kind of fun, with a modicum of attractive characters and enough unanswered questions to keep people coming back. (In any case, I’m not about to warn you away on the basis of a single, pretty good episode.) And some of the fire scenes are exciting, though in this (literal) climate, it is odd to watch things burn for the sake of a television show, even when one recognizes that special effects account for much of what we’re seeing and some professionally controlled burns for the rest. I mean, I’d be surprised to learn that the production team went about willy-nilly setting things on fire — that is not a series I could ever endorse.