“Hightown,” Starz' eight-episode TV series set in Provincetown, is a “story of very imperfect redemption,” its creator says.

“Hightown,” an eight-episode TV series set in Provincetown, will premiere May 17 on Starz as a “story of very imperfect redemption” and “transformation” as well as a “funny, sexy, exciting crime drama.”

That’s how creator, showrunner and executive producer Rebecca Cutter describes the upcoming pay-cable show that she says, in a letter to the press, is her way of sharing “the most beautiful place on earth.”

The series, starring Monica Raymund of “Chicago Fire,” was largely filmed in New York, but actors and crews spent more than a week in June in Provincetown and around the Cape. Location shots included a fake Carnival parade.

Scenes shot last year, including aerial views of the town and well-known landmarks, are prominent in a trailer that has been airing frequently on Starz as well as the opening credits to the episodes. Both the trailer finale and a Starz Instagram post last week say “Welcome to the Cape.”

Cutter says she grew up spending every summer in Provincetown (after her parents “discovered” it in the 1970s) and feels “a sense of pride and ownership” unlike her connection anywhere else. “This is because P'town is more than a town, it is an emblem of personal and sexual freedom, artistic expression, escape, fun, and of course, breathtaking beauty,” she says.

Cutter married a Brewster man (in Provincetown), and she then saw Cape Cod in every season and its “dichotomy” of dark and light. The darkness that has arrived here during the opioid epidemic, she says, is the backdrop for the “Hightown” story of Jackie Quinones (Raymund), “a hard-drinking and womanizing P'town year-rounder” who gets sucked into the investigation of a drug-related murder as she begins a journey toward sobriety.

Cutter says she has been sober for 16 years, and the transformation of sobriety — “a physical, emotional and spiritual do-over” — is at the heart of “Hightown.”