Peacock‘s “Long Bright River,” based mostly on Liz Moore’s best-selling novel and tailored to tv by Moore and Nikki Toscano, presents audiences a way more distinctive story than the everyday homicide thriller. The restricted sequence, which facilities on Philadephia patrol cop Mickey Fitzpatrick (an impressive Amanda Seyfried), is a layered narrative about two sisters, an inescapable household historical past and a neighborhood doomed by poverty, habit and negligence.
With a workforce of ladies administrators on the helm, “Lengthy Shiny River” opens in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. A younger, unhoused girl awakens in her tent and heads to the avenue to start her workday. Settling right into a automotive, she instantly realizes one thing is off when her John locks her in and speeds down the highway. Elsewhere within the metropolis, Mickey drives her 7-year-old son, Thomas (Callum Vinson), to high school. The pair hearken to a symphony and focus on its deserves earlier than she drops him off and goes to her job on the police precinct.
Later, along with her newly assigned accomplice, Eddie Lafferty (Sprint Mihok), Mickey heads to the avenue, the place she speaks to the intercourse employees, a lot of whom she’s identified since childhood. Whereas Lafferty seems deeply uncomfortable within the neighborhood and his uniform, Mickey is comfy. She acknowledges that she’s a protected area for these girls, particularly since so many others — together with their households — have written them off. The day takes a flip when the cops study {that a} physique has been discovered on some close by prepare tracks. When Mickey spots the lifeless girl’s lengthy pink hair protecting her face, she freezes and begins to panic. Although she hasn’t mentioned a phrase to Lafferty or anybody else within the police division, Mickey’s youthful sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), who additionally sports activities vibrant pink hair and struggles with habit, has been lacking for weeks.
Seeing the physique disturbs Mickey to her core, and units her on a path to search out Kacey. Nevertheless, amid her quest to find her sister, extra girls who work the avenue preserve turning up lifeless. The police initially attempt to write the deaths off as overdoses, however Mickey’s tenacity and persistence pressure the division to take a better look. Sergeant Kevin Ahearn (Patch Darragh) brings in Detective Davis Danjarat (Joe Daru) to steer the investigation, however it regularly stalls. Annoyed with the police’s lack of urgency and decided to catch the killer and discover Kacey earlier than it’s too late, Mickey enlists the one one that has by no means let her down, her former accomplice Truman Dawes (Nicholas Pinnock), who has been on depart since he was injured on the job months prior. Collectively, they uncover a haunting labyrinth created by cycles of disempowerment and despair.
As intriguing because the thriller surrounding the murdered girls is, Seyfried’s efficiency as Mickey elevates this sequence. Adultified from early childhood and raised by her surly however well-meaning grandfather, whom she affectionately calls G-Pop (John Doman), Mickey strikes by way of her life with an amazing weight on her shoulders. Her fears about Kacey, considerations for Thomas and what’s taking place on the avenue are palpable. She has hardly had a second of reduction or true happiness. Although her actions are sometimes profoundly irritating, fastidiously positioned flashbacks, starting within the late Nineteen Nineties and into the mid-2010s, permit the viewers to know who Mickey is and why she is skittish of everybody besides Thomas.
The nuances of being the older sibling, and particularly the eldest daughter of an impoverished, fractured or immigrant household, are starting to achieve extra traction in mainstream media. Mickey, tasked with maintaining her rebellious sister in line, by no means had the chance to be a child. This state of being stunted her development and her potential to open up and belief. In probably the most shifting scenes within the present from Episode 3, “Mom Wolf,” a pissed off Truman yells at her for endangering herself and maintaining secrets and techniques from him, saying, “You will have a nasty sense of who to let in!”
As Mickey and Truman’s investigation alters, shifts and adjustments course, extra surprising revelations regarding Mickey’s lineage are uncovered, forcing her to rethink every thing she thought she knew whereas confronting private missteps which have altered her life. A superbly structured sequence, “Lengthy Shiny River” is about sisterhood, connection and the truths usually buried below deep-seated guilt and disgrace.
All eight episodes of “Lengthy Shiny River” premiere on March 13 on Peacock.
