‘Mayor of Kingstown’ Parental Guide: The Show’s Age Ratings Explained

Mayor of Kingstown is now one of the most viewed shows on Paramount + as the power-brokering skills of Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) in the crime-dominated city of Kingstown attract a global fan base. The show has some of the highest-rated prison scenes on TV since the end of Prison Break, so parents shouldn’t be surprised when their children are interested in the show. Child safety is still a major concern as far as the show’s content is concerned. So is the show safe for children?

Mayor of Kingstown is rated 15+ by Paramount, but that may be way too low for most parents considering the level of violence, nudity, and strong language used in the show. While parental protection can be enabled for young viewers, it doesn’t do much to eliminate profanity and violence because they are part of almost every scene in the show hence the TV-MA rating by the authorities. It is, therefore, advisable to restrict the watching of the Mayor of Kingstown to adult viewers only.

Like other prison dramas, nearly every scene in Mayor of Kingstown has an expletive, making safe viewing for children under 15 almost impossible. Mayor of Kingstown is still a rich show with many important lessons on perseverance, leadership, and inclusivity that every family can use. So, can families sit down and enjoy the hit show together without negatively affecting young viewers? Let’s delve into the parental guide for watching the Mayor of Kingstown.

What is the age rating for Mayor of Kingstown?

Mayor of Kingstown is rated TV-MA in the US and Canada, which means it is unsuitable for children. The ratings on the show are only based on the legal requirements and may not necessarily give details on the appropriate age and viewing settings for all viewers.

The show, therefore, needs parents to have parental restrictions enabled at all times on accounts that children below 18 years of age have access to.

Mayor of Kingstown has a grim storyline full of violence, nudity, and gore because they are all necessary to express the show’s dystopian theme around the fictional city.

The safest cause of action for the Mayor of Kingstown is to restrict viewing for all children under the age of 15 years. 16 and 17-year-olds can watch the show with parental guidance based on the maturity level of each viewer.

What is Mayor of Kingstown about?

Mayor of Kingstown follows life in the fictional city of Kingstown, Michigan, where incarceration is the only functioning industry because the town has ten prisons within a 7-mile radius.

The violence between gangs in the prisons spills onto the streets, and the delicate peace maintained by the powerful McLusky family is the only thing that keeps the city going.

The protagonist is Mike Mclusky, the middle of three brothers, who takes over the unofficial role of “Mayor,” brokering peace between police, prison gangs, and prison guards after the death of his elder brother Mitch.

The 52-year-old knows almost everyone in the city, having been in prison and joined the white supremacist gang called the Aryan Brotherhood at some point. All the parties in the town, including the DA, respect Mike, making him a superhero in his own right.

Despite Mike’s efforts, the city seems destined for doom because of the high level of crime, violence, inequality, and racism that just doesn’t go away. Everyone seems to resort to violence, and the whole system is broken unless Mike maintains the balance.

Content in Mayor of Kingstown Explained

The main theme of the Mayor of Kingstown is the attempt to restore sanity to a virtually broken society where violent killings are most people’s definition of justice. The mission is supported by a group of people that love their home too much to let it dissolve into absolute anarchy.

From the show’s first episode, violence, nudeness, and simulated sex scenes are displayed. From a parental perspective, here is a breakdown of different sensitive content categories in the Mayor of Kingstown.

Mayor of Kingstown: Sex and nudity

The Mayor of Kingstown can be rated 18+ as far as sex and nudity are concerned because sexual content is displayed in many scenes. Most of the nudity is expressed with complete or partial male and female nudity, with sexually-suggestive dancing in strip club scenes also displayed.

Sex scenes also display buttock and breast exposure in most scenes. Sexual violence and sex trafficking are covered in multiple scenes in the show. Here are examples of scenes that express the level of nudity in the show:

• A woman strips in front of a male audience in a strip club.
• A simulated sex scene showing a threesome.
• A female inmate seduces a male guard into having sex with her and then stabs him in the neck to his death after framing him for rape.
• A man rapes and assaults a woman after drugging her.
• A drugged woman is traded as a sex slave between gangs.

As explained here, it is clear that the Mayor of Kingstown is only suitable for a mature audience that can tolerate and understand sexual content without misinterpreting the plot.

Mayor Of Kingstown: Violence

Violence and gore are the main part of the crime drama because the plot talks about life in a city where gangs fight for control in prisons and streets.

There are lots of violent deaths with lots of blood in all the episodes. Gun violence is also part of most scenes, especially where gang fights and police operations are involved.

Stabbings, lynchings, and stranglings dominate the killings in the prison scenes, with lots of blood being displayed. Here are some examples of notable scenes of violence and gore in Mayor of Kingstown:

• A robber shoots a man in the back of the head after forcing him to open a safe and give him the money. The police then track down the man and shoot him in cold blood.

• A man shoots another one through his windscreen, killing him instantly, before shooting his accomplices inside a building.

• A prison warden covers an inmate’s head with a bag and bludgeons him to death while fellow prisoners are forced to watch.
• A man sets his house on fire with a little child and his mother inside, burning both of them to death with the burnt bodies of the victims displayed on the screen.

Violence and gore drive the entire plot, making it unsuitable for underage viewers and those who are sensitive to blood, violent blast sounds, and other forms of violence.

Mayor Of Kingstown: Strong language and profanity

Strong language is used throughout Mayor Of Kingstown, with what many parents would call dirty language, or even worse, used throughout the show.

The F word is probably part of every scene in Mayor of Kingstown, so parental control is not enough to prevent children from hearing the curse word.

Bastard, hell, a*****e, and all other types of curse words are frequently used with no censoring because fighting and arguing with insults are pretty much what the show is about.

Most of the characters in Mayor of Kingstown are hardened criminals or law enforcement officers surrounded by death and violence daily; therefore, a child-friendly language would be too much to ask from them.

Is Mayor Of Kingstown appropriate for children?

There is really no way to watch Mayor of Kingstown safely with children because the explicitness of the sex scenes, violence, and gore are part of most of the scenes in the show.

The IMDB Parental Guide rating for each category of sensitive topics is “severe” for the Mayor of Kingstown, meaning the show’s content cannot be safely consumed by underage viewers.

While the Mayor of Kingstown tries to condemn the vices promoted in towns in which private prisons are operated, the show ends up expressing lots of crime and violence, with the theme glorifying some actions that a young mind cannot comprehend.

The show should therefore be restricted to mature viewers, preferably aged 18 and above, to prevent misinterpretation of the plot and to endanger the mental health of underage and sensitive viewers.