The ghost of Kate Winslet haunts Peacock’s by-the-numbers new crime drama Lengthy Shiny River, a plodding try to duplicate the Oscar winner’s small-screen success story Mare of Easttown. That present appeared like repetitive method on paper however 4 years in the past subsequent month, it turned the type of buzzed about hit that TV execs dream of, successful over critics, audiences and Emmy voters. It led to the beginning of a rotten new time period utilized in trade boardrooms, the “prestige-ural”, a status procedural which might transplant high-end manufacturing values and an A-list lead on to materials that had lengthy been related to churned out primetime community fodder.
So right here comes Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried taking part in one other Philadelphia cop who finds herself grappling with each the opioid disaster and the case of a murdered younger girl which hyperlinks to her personal previous and troubled household dynamic. It’s exhausting to not make immediate comparisons however then Mare of Easttown was itself extremely indebted to Completely satisfied Valley, Sally Wainwright’s sensational Yorkshire-set sequence starring Sarah Lancashire as a personality so near Winslet’s that it nearly felt like a remake. With Lengthy Shiny River, we’re removed from the gold normal set there, the present a well-known but forgettable remix.
There may need been a extra compelling tackle Liz Moore’s acclaimed novel to be made, the e-book having obtained sturdy evaluations upon launch (the Guardian’s Stephanie Merritt known as it “startlingly contemporary”). However like many an adaptation within the streaming period, it’s cursed by bloat, the potential of a propulsive two-hour film destroyed by an typically punishingly misjudged eight-hour size. It’s a call that the makers would possibly justify by explaining how they wanted to take care of the depth of character current within the supply materials, flipping backwards and forwards via time to flesh out their protagonist, but it surely appears like one other alternative made for the sake of extra content material, extra advertisements to be bought, as creatively it kills no matter drive this might have had.
Lengthy Shiny River is trapped between the status and the procedural, having the large star lead and restricted sequence size of the previous however the cheaper finances and hackneyed really feel of the latter. Seyfried’s profession had sputtered out within the years earlier than she nabbed her first Oscar nomination in David Fincher’s Mank however she’s since discovered arguably her best function up to now as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, deservedly successful an Emmy and Golden Globe. She’s a bit of extra misplaced right here, taking part in beat cop Mickey who has remained in her impoverished Kensington neighbourhood, patrolling the streets she’s at all times recognized. She’s taken it upon herself to take care of the ladies who haven’t been fairly as fortunate as her, falling into the murk, hooked on medicine and promoting their our bodies to outlive. Mickey has another excuse for this degree of care: her sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) is one among them.
The plot kicks in after Mickey finds the physique of a lady who she initially worries is likely to be Kacey and it kicks off an investigation as to why extra ladies are cropping up useless. Her superiors are content material to chalk their deaths as much as the apparent – the out-of-control opioid epidemic – however she’s satisfied one thing extra nefarious is at play.
From the preliminary scenes, of homeless encampments and intercourse employees scored to tragic piano, the well-intentioned but clumsy tone of Lengthy Shiny River typically feels nearer to a PSA than a severe drama. There’s little or no model or subtlety right here (an emotional second soundtracked by a tune from Pink and The Lumineers ought to inform you every thing) and whereas its very legitimate factors about how these on the backside of the meals chain are simply forgotten and abused shouldn’t be undersold, there’s a wiser, simpler option to deal with weighty materials akin to this. A lot of Lengthy Shiny River is a slog and regardless of the saggy runtime, Moore and Nikki Toscano, the Revenge author, are unable so as to add sufficient emotional weight to contain us in Mickey’s narrative, instructed in typically confusingly interspersed flashbacks. Any grit which may have elevated it’s softened by the cliches they’ll’t assist however embody – the no-fucks cop who doesn’t play by the foundations, her precocious cute son who by no means as soon as resembles an actual child, her good-looking love curiosity who helps her crack the case – and so it simply falls into an ever-expanding pile of exhibits we have now seen earlier than.
The prolonged size additionally eliminated any suspense or shock from the plot, giving us far an excessive amount of time to work out a lot of it by ourselves and whereas there are extra fascinating concepts and divulges within the remaining few episodes, they don’t forgive the battle it was to get there. It additionally doesn’t actually really feel like one of the best use of Seyfried both, an actor whose conventionally engaging appears have typically caught her in milquetoast lead roles when she’s much better in weirder territory, taking part in a weather-predicting airhead in Imply Ladies or a deluded con artist in The Dropout (her charmingly unusual off-screen presence, as somebody so obsessive about the phrase minge she had it tattooed on her foot, additionally suggests she can be higher served choosing extra offbeat roles). She’s far too spiky for a present content material with being so tediously flat.
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