'Fire Country' Star Max Thieriot Explains Why CBS Show Is 'Very Different' (Exclusive)

Fire Country premieres on CBS on Friday at 9 p.m. ET and stars Max Thieriot who is known for his work on SEAL Team. While Fire Country will be about firefighting in Northern California, it's not going to be like the other firefighting shows on television. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Thieriot explained how Fire Country will stand out from shows that seem similar. 

"I think that people will see that Fire Country is different from any firefighting show on television," Thieriot exclusively told PopCulture. We're not rescue of the week. We're not fire of the week. First of all, this department is an all-risk department. So we're not just going to be fighting wildland fires, which obviously is something that they're most known for. They respond to every call, every situation, anytime somebody picks up 911, they're there. And so we'll be showing the full scope of what firefighters do on the job. And then the big thing is this is really a serialized character drama. So it has a lot of those amazing elements that you get from whatever, it's cable or whatever shows they are, where you're really getting to invest in these characters and explore their journey."

Thieriot continued: "There's a lot of heart. There's a lot of redemption throughout the story. And also, I think visually, it looks unlike any firefighting show just because of the nature of where we're shooting. It's rural. We're seeing small town and tons of outdoor landscapes and just a huge scope. And we're not just a little department that's going to be handling car crashes and building fires every week. So it's very different."

Thieriot plays Bode Donovan, a young convict seeking redemption and a shortened prison sentence by joining a prison release firefighting program where here other inmates team up with elite firefighters. But when Bode finds out he's assigned to his hometown in Northern California, things get a little interesting and not in a good way.

Thieriot, who is from the Northern California area and is also an executive producer of Fire Country, explained why he wanted to tell this story. "It was exploring this world that was kind of just so close to me and what it's growing up in a small town," he said. "And I always just loved how those relationships are so intertwined and how everything really, it affects everybody ultimately. And so I think when you set a department there in a small town where most of these people who do this job are from, it makes a lot of these incidents that much more personal."