After Hurricane Katrina, bitter residents of New Orleans were of the opinion there would be a special place in hell for insurance adjusters.
And now, for your TV viewing pleasure, here’s Luke Kirby playing an insurance adjuster who is - wait for it - the protagonist.
Really?
“That’s right, mark my little circle in hell,” Kirby said.
Okay, a few things must be pointed out.
First, Kirby’s new series Cra$h & Burn, a Canadian original which debuts Wednesday, Nov. 18 on Showcase, is not set in New Orleans, but rather in Hamilton.
And second, Kirby’s character, Jimmy Burn, isn’t the protagonist in a squeaky-clean sense of the term.
“An insurance adjuster is not the most sympathetic character that would come to mind immediately, but Jimmy has some sense of justice,” said Kirby, a 31-year-old native of Guelph, Ont., who previously has appeared in series such as Tell Me You Love Me and Slings & Arrows.
“I also think there’s an aspect of his personality that is not necessarily likable, which is fun to play.”
In Cra$h & Burn, Jimmy is trapped in a world in which everyone seems to be either coldly uncaring or on the take.
He works for a big insurance company, alongside in-house lawyer Catherine Scott (played by Caroline Cave) and insurance investigator Walker Hearn (Clark Johnson).
Jimmy is in a struggle to keep his job and the uncertainty is compromising his plans to marry his girlfriend Lucia (Leela Savasta).
On a day-to-day basis at work, Jimmy must deal with the likes of Korkov (Steve Bacic), a crooked mechanic and Russian mobster who continuously is trying to scam the system.
That’s the thing about the insurance game. While it’s true that adjusters rarely are seen as heroic, everyone is trying to pull one over on them, too.
At one point in the debut episode of Cra$h & Burn, Walker tells Jimmy, “Everybody steals.”
If one considers that comment to be largely true, the one thing this series will have to guard against is being too depressing to be entertaining.
“You don’t want it just to be a downer,” Kirby agreed. “But hopefully there is the notion of my character trying to keep his head above water.
“This is a guy who manages to get himself into situations where, when I’m reading the scripts, I’ll say to myself, ‘God, he can’t get out.’ But there is some levity with his, and other people’s, cunning, their ability to rise above.
“They may not be in the best situations, but sometimes it could have been worse.”
In other words, Jimmy can’t fix the system, but he can massage the system, for his own benefit and occasionally for the benefit of others.
“Jimmy is in the belly of the beast, you know?” Kirby said. “He has his weapons and his armour and he’s trying to slowly slice away. We all end up with a few knives in our backs.
“There’s an aspect of this show that is just kind of looking at the reality of commerce. We would be a little remiss to think it was easier.”
bill.harris@sunmedia.ca
