Before Marvel, Jeremy Renner Starred In This Gritty Forgotten Crime Drama

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Big-named Hollywood actors can surprise us with where they get their start on the small screen; this kind of occurrence is commonplace in the business as performers climb the ladder to top-level placement in massive movies. You never truly know where you'll meet one of your favorite stars first on-screen, and the idea of meeting a film darling in a shared TV universe is becoming more and more common.  Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have delighted in tracking the wild places their faves' careers have taken them before suiting up to fight alongside the Avengers. Jeremy Renner had some fun moments before picking up the bow as Hawkeye, and "The Unusuals" might be the most low-key assignment of his career.

"The Unusuals" was a gritty crime drama that aired for one season on ABC back in 2009. The show starred Jeremy Renner, and the series came to life under the eye of Noah Hawley, long before he got the chance to terrify Earth with aliens. Our future Clint Barton used to call New York City's Second Precinct home, which he shared with a bunch of eccentric detectives tasked with solving different cases every week. "The Unusuals" is currently available to buy on Prime Video and to stream on FuboTV, which means people can still check this show out all these years later. Despite its short run, it's got a lot of charm as Harold Perrineau, Amber Tamblyn, and Kai Lennox all play characters that you'll remember long after you cruise through those 10 episodes.

TV is not exactly short on police procedurals, but "The Unusuals" at least tried to do something interesting with the format, and it largely succeeded on those terms. Instead of just leaning into the standard archetypes of "the serious one," "the wisecracker," and "the encyclopedia brain," "The Unusuals" decided to give these strange little detectives their own unique flair. The Second Precinct might be overflowing with personality, and maybe a tinge too reliant on late-aughts dialogue flourishes that stand out in our current moment, but you won't forget them by any stretch.

It needs to be stated, Noah Hawley knows how to pick a cast, and that fact is on display here for everyone to see as current big names are nestled right up next to each other in the credits. Alongside Jeremy Renner are people that audiences already know, like Perrineau (he's already been on the "Lost" island at this point), and Tamblyn is essentially engraved in a generation's subconscious after "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." It's impressive stuff and all before Hawley sets up his biggest hit of that era with "Fargo," which would include Adam Goldberg, who plays Detective Eric Delahoy in this procedural.

Revisiting some moments from "The Unusuals" short run reveals high-profile guest stars, who don't seem like it at the time, including Miles Teller and Adam Driver as crooks. It's hysterical to see a show with this many famous people hovering around it get canned so quickly, and see the rest of that order burned off unceremoniously. A true shame! (This show feels like a TV version of "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" for how funny the cast listing is after the fact.) Honestly, anyone who had the foresight to cast Cristin Milioti as a sketch artist who plays a recurring role in a show should have been given the go-ahead to chase at least another 10-episode season, or the chance to let the actress hang with a dolphin again.

More than anything, though, "The Unusuals" might be the most interesting kernel of what was going to dominate TV and movies in the ensuing decade, as this exact kind of dramadey took hold across different corners of the medium. Hawley's biggest mistake might have been producing this so far ahead of the slew of TV shows that put a bunch of characters into a "mundane-seeming" situation and then letting their character quirks and dynamics just whisk the fans off into episodes that really showcase who they are while solving a central case at the same time. Everywhere you look right now, there's a "found family" unit looking to solve a problem together, but they also have to contend with how everyone in their group is different and therefore wants to achieve that goal in different ways.

ABC's short-lived drama serves as not only a fun footnote in the careers of Jeremy Renner and Noah Hawley, but also as a window into what the future of TV was going to look like. By being a bit ahead of its time, the series creator got to show the world what was coming and how character-driven procedural plots would come to rule the roost in just a few years. Thinking about a show like "The Unusuals" across from an animated TV mainstay like "Archer" is a fun exercise, because they function similarly, well, except for becoming drug runners or private eyes for that one season.

Luckily, growing numbers of quirky TV shows like this are more commonplace now, and the entire medium is better for it as we continue to push the limits of what specific genres like the procedural can be when we really investigate them. "The Unusuals" might have died an untimely death, but out of the patch on the forest floor where its 10 episodes lay, a bunch of wildflowers bear the same off-beat humor that made it interesting, and they're flourishing in that spot.