There are a few ways to discern that Raylan Givens, the character at the center of the FX series Justified (10 p.m. today) is an Elmore Leonard creation.
Although he is a deputy U.S. marshal in a contemporary milieu, he wears a big old cowboy hat, and his pistol, which he carries in a side holster, comes out only when he gets down to business. He doesn't spend a lot of time waving the gun around, but when it does reveal itself in a flash, the bodies tend to fall around him.
Oh, and one other thing: As played by Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood), the steely gaze of a lawman is replaced with a courtly manner and a twinkle of mirth in his eye. In fact, just about everybody in Justified displays good manners while doing some very ill-mannered things.
The series grew out of an Elmore Leonard short story, "Fire in the Hole," and puts Givens in Kentucky, where he grew up and vowed never to return.
Justified is hardly the first attempt to render the dialogue of Leonard, the author of dozens of novels over the past 50 years, suitable for the small screen. But though some of the films made from his novels --Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Jackie Brown -- have found critical and commercial success, television has not always been so kind to the Leonard oeuvre.
Such network efforts as Karen Cisco and Maximum Bob tanked, in part because Leonard's characters tend to do and say things that don't fly with network standards. On FX, thanks to basic cable's less restrictive policies, the people in Justified cuss and sleep around, the former stripper really does have a heart of gold, and the neo-Nazi is charming and loquacious.
The setting in Kentucky, where the lawman and the suspect might have once mined coal together, democratizes the landscape on both sides of the law.
Leonard, 84, has never been shy about speaking up when he thought his work was mangled, but he's clearly happy with Justified.
"I don't write for laughs, but I have fun writing, and I think the people doing Justified are doing the same thing," he said. "There is a freedom from the kinds of formulas that networks usually use, and the characters are complicated. They aren't just one thing."
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