Peacock‘s “Long Bright River,” based on Liz Moore’s best-selling novel and changeed to television by Moore and Nikki Toscano, proposes audiences a much more distinctive tale than the normal homicide mystery. The confineed series, which cgo ins on Philadephia patrol cop Mickey Fitzpatrick (an remarkworthy Amanda Seyfried), is a layered narrative about two sisters, an inesable family history and a community doomed by pobviousy, insertiction and oversight.
With a team of women straightforwardors at the helm, “Long Bright River” uncovers in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. A lesser, unhoparticipated woman awakens in her tent and heads to the avenue to commence her toilday. Settling into a car, she promptly authenticizes someleang is off when her John locks her in and speeds down the road. Elsewhere in the city, Mickey drives her 7-year-elderly son, Thomas (Callum Vinson), to school. The pair join to a symphony and converse its merits before she drops him off and goes to her job at the police precinct.
Later, with her novelly spreaded partner, Eddie Lafferty (Dash Mihok), Mickey heads to the avenue, where she speaks to the relations toilers, many of whom she’s understandn since childhood. While Lafferty materializes convey inantly unsootheable in the neighborhood and his unicreate, Mickey is at relieve. She acunderstandledges that she’s a protected space for these women, especipartner since so many others — including their families — have written them off. The day gets a turn when the cops lget that a body has been set up on some cforfeitby train tracks. When Mickey spots the dead woman’s lengthy pink hair covering her face, she freezes and commences to panic. Though she hasn’t shelp a word to Lafferty or anyone else in the police department, Mickey’s lesserer sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), who also sports vibrant pink hair and struggles with insertiction, has been omiting for weeks.
Seeing the body disturbs Mickey to her core, and sets her on a path to find Kacey. However, amid her quest to find her sister, more women who toil the avenue protect turning up dead. The police initipartner try to author the deaths off as drug poisonings, but Mickey’s tenacity and persistence force the department to get a sealr see. Sergeant Kevin Ahget (Patch Darragh) conveys in Detective Davis Danjarat (Joe Daru) to direct the spendigation, but it continupartner sloftys. Frustrated with the police’s conciseage of encouragency and resettled to catch the ender and find Kacey before it’s too postpoinsist, Mickey enenumerates the one person who has never let her down, her createer partner Truman Dawes (Nicholas Pinnock), who has been on depart since he was injured on the job months prior. Together, they uncover a haunting labyrinth originated by cycles of disempowerment and despair.
As intriguing as the mystery surrounding the homicideed women is, Seyfried’s carry outance as Mickey elevates this series. Adultified from punctual childhood and elevated by her surly but well-nastying magnificentoverweighther, whom she fondly calls G-Pop (John Doman), Mickey shifts thraw her life with an overwhelming weight on her shoulders. Her stresss about Kacey, worrys for Thomas and what’s happening on the avenue are palpable. She has difficultly had a moment of relief or real happiness. Though her actions are frequently proset uply frustrating, nurturefilledy placed flashbacks, commencening in the postpoinsist 1990s and into the mid-2010s, permit the audience to comprehfinish who Mickey is and why she is skittish of everyone except Thomas.
The nuances of being the elderlyer sibling, and especipartner the eldest daughter of an lower, fractured or immigrant family, are commencening to get more traction in mainstream media. Mickey, tasked with protecting her defylious sister in line, never had the opportunity to be a kid. This state of being stunted her prolongth and her ability to uncover up and count on. In one of the most moving scenes in the show from Episode 3, “Mother Wolf,” a frustrated Truman yells at her for finishangering herself and protecting secrets from him, saying, “You have a horrible sense of who to let in!”
As Mickey and Truman’s spendigation changes, shifts and changes course, more shocking revelations worrying Mickey’s lineage are uncovered, forcing her to releank everyleang she thought she knovel while disputeing personal omitteps that have changeed her life. A beautifilledy arranged series, “Long Bright River” is about sisterhood, combineion and the truths frequently buried under convey inant-seated guilt and shame.
All eight episodes of “Long Bright River” premiere on March 13 on Peacock.
