Movies

Amanda Seyfried’s Arresting Efficiency Grounds Peacock’s Subversive Crime Thriller

March 12, 2025

Crime thrillers have graced our tv screens nearly so long as tv itself has existed. Whether or not it is emotionally tormented detectives rooting out evildoers in dirty city cities or preternaturally insightful investigators sniffing round cozy, quirky English villages, the crime style — each procedural and narrative-driven — has developed into some of the dependable choices for studios to provide and a fictional class at all times ripe for reinvention. But regardless of the style’s oddly comforting draw, too few sequence have dared to interrogate widespread police corruption, particularly its inescapably harmful prevalence inside america. Fewer nonetheless decide to humanizing a number of the underrepresented and misunderstood minority teams intentionally forgotten by regulation enforcement and politicians alike: intercourse employees, unhoused people, working-class households, individuals scuffling with substance abuse, and younger, impressionable ladies who’re weak to predators carrying the uniform of a protector.

Peacock’s new miniseries Lengthy Shiny River is the exception to the norm. Based mostly on the bestselling and critically acclaimed novel by Liz Moore and tailored for the display screen by showrunner Nikki Toscano (with Moore as a co-writer), Lengthy Shiny River attracts from Moore’s private experiences with Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood drastically affected by deindustrialization and gentrification, in addition to Moore’s household’s historical past with habit. By and enormous, Lengthy Shiny River avoids the pitfalls and propaganda related to procedures by centralizing the aforementioned teams most affected by Kensington’s financial decline. The sequence additionally sits on the intersection of America’s ongoing opioid disaster and the nation’s stark class divide, whereas additionally taking the time to overturn the damaging white savior narrative — and conveys all these intricacies by way of a riveting love story between two damaged sisters.

What Is ‘Lengthy Shiny River’ About?

Every day, police officer Mickey Fitzpatrick (Amanda Seyfried) patrols her beat in Kensington. Her reserved disposition and keenness for music do not appear to suit her occupation, however at the very least her shifts permit her to drop off and choose up her eight-year-old son, Thomas (Callum Vinson), from one in every of Kensington’s higher colleges — the identical one Mickey can not afford after Thomas’ absent father instantly and irrevocably cuts off each his youngster assist funds and Thomas’ tuition funds.

Kensington itself does not fare any higher. The identical streets Mickey trod as a baby have been ravaged by opioids and poverty. Assets are scarce and help even scarcer, leaving companies, housing areas, and the people dwelling hand-to-mouth to fester. However in contrast to just about all of her white male colleagues, Mickey can identify each intercourse employee her automotive passes. Some she is aware of from her faculty days, and the remainder she acknowledges due to her easy choice to care about them as human beings. The police division’s disdain for the individuals they’re imagined to serve comes into razor-sharp focus when Mickey learns a possible serial killer is searching intercourse employees. Neither her boss nor her co-workers present any inclination to commit the assets mandatory to analyze a quickly rising variety of suspicious deaths — they simply dismiss these girls as anonymous overdoses.

The case instantly turns into extra private for Mickey as soon as she discovers that her youthful sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), vanished across the identical time the murders started. The Fitzpatrick sisters as soon as swore to observe each other’s backs so long as they lived, till Kacey’s relapses into substance habit drove them aside. Now, the normally by-the-book Mickey dangers her profession desperately looking for Kacey and the person — or males — focusing on the intercourse employee neighborhood. Keen to comply with Mickey into hell is her outdated associate, Truman Dawes (Nicholas Pinnock), who’s nonetheless on medical go away following an incident Mickey carries immense guilt about.

‘Lengthy Shiny River’ Handles Substance Abuse With Spectacular Care

Mickey (Amanda Seyfried) lifting the sheet off a dead body in the morgue in Long Bright River — Picture by way of Peacock

Lengthy Shiny River pulls double responsibility as a multi-generational household saga and a suspenseful, socioeconomic thriller. Mickey and Kacey’s estranged relationship defines the sequence’ narrative thread; from the time they have been misplaced, fragile ladies raised by their brusque grandfather (John Doman), there has by no means been a second when Mickey hasn’t worn herself to shreds worrying about Kacey. Consequently, the one fixed in Mickey’s life is her have to struggle: preventing the systematic prejudice in opposition to minority teams, preventing the discriminatory and punitive justice system, and preventing the demons of her previous — the vast majority of which assume Kacey’s form.

Utilizing this sibling framing as a jumping-off level, Lengthy Shiny River unflinchingly contends with the excruciating trauma of loving somebody who struggles with habit. Moore lays out questions missing all-encompassing solutions: how lengthy do you give grace to somebody who retains relapsing, and when do you erect boundaries to your personal sake? We won’t assist however marvel if such a harrowing restrict even exists — but there’s solely a lot of ourselves we are able to pour into the identical devastating cycle earlier than we shatter past restore. And after we grieve over our struggling family members, is not our anger and disappointment misplaced? They’re drowning, and so they lack the assets and construction to maintain their heads above water.

‘Lengthy Shiny River’ Boldly Confronts Police Corruption

Amanda Seyfried and Ashleigh Cummings in Long Bright River Episode 1 — Picture by way of Peacock

In Lengthy Shiny River‘s case, the police refuse to offer such important, life-saving help. Mickey and Truman would possibly try to be “good, totally different” cops in a sea of their opposites, however their contributions inside the system do not matter when the establishment rampantly oppresses minorities and uplifts white supremacist ideology. Corruption spills down from the highest like crude oil — it is unattainable for 2 well-meaning characters to overthrow or redeem the racially pushed violence, the exploitation of the weak, and the malicious abuse of energy.

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In line with this theme, Lengthy Shiny River subverts the poisonous white savior narrative. Mickey the cop doesn’t have to play rescuer as a result of the intercourse employee neighborhood protects their very own whereas retaining their autonomy and dignity. Nevertheless, it issues when Mickey the person says the victims’ names, particularly when nobody else bothers. None of those girls graduated from highschool and determined to turn into financially destitute and hooked on opioids whereas dwelling in a tent on the sidewalk. They’ve at all times been, and can ceaselessly stay, people with shattered goals and no different recourse. Even when they did select their circumstances, they do not deserve much less compassion. Lengthy Shiny River‘s supporting characters nonetheless exist as a part of Kensington’s DNA and are not lowered to mere victims — regardless that society has tossed them to the wolves, and that abandonment viscerally exhibits.

If there’s one weak spot to be discovered on this sequence (of which all eight episodes have been supplied for overview), it is the dearth of Black and POC voices. Pinnock takes second billing as Truman, and each actor and character make for an outstanding, empathetic, and socially resisting presence. But on the subject of affairs immediately related to every day American life for Black people and other people of colour, Lengthy Shiny River lacks their views. Presumably, Mickey is a white lady, so the story can deconstruct the white knight archetype, and this author does not possess first-hand information of Kensington’s inhabitants demographic. Nonetheless, not together with a extra various ensemble looks like a elementary oversight.

Amanda Seyfried’s Excellent Efficiency Leads ‘Lengthy Shiny River’s Highly effective Solid

Lengthy Shiny River‘s directing crew gives a refreshing twist on the moody status tv really feel by evoking old school realism. Kensington involves life by way of naturalistic lighting and genuine set design; the mid-afternoon solar rolls over the battered buildings and the litter-covered streets, and lived-in interiors indulge in heat orange hues. A contact of cool blue shading cloaks the grim, deep shadows of a midnight alleyway, however the spill of the streetlamps ensures that each the actors’ faces and the motion by which they partake are sufficiently lit. Lengthy Shiny River unfolds in the course of the winter holidays, so strings of colourful Christmas bulbs accent the characters’ houses like a tender, inviting haven in between the sequence’ brutal dealings. Total, Kensington seems like a personality dropped at its lowest — melancholy, desolate, and ruined, but by no means frigid. The neighborhood sighs with weariness but nonetheless radiates the historical past of Philadelphia’s tradition: the Mummers, the murals, and the small companies surviving regardless of inequality.

The last word success of Lengthy Shiny River rests squarely upon Seyfried’s shoulders, and this main flip could have secured the actress a second Emmy. Her arresting efficiency each grounds the proceedings and hovers over them like an ominous storm cloud. Mickey’s eyes replicate a world of internal turmoil, as years of unstated remorse, heartbreak, and exhausted hope lurk behind her middle-distance gaze. It is unattainable to look away from Mickey lest we lose a tell-tale glimpse of her true coronary heart, or simply to understand the stressed method Seyfried wields her posture right down to her twitching fingers. Seyfried and Vinson share spectacular mother-son chemistry, with Vinson in a position to steadiness Thomas’ brilliant innocence and curious mind with a coronary heart attuned to his mom’s moods. Pinnock, in the meantime, is an absolute pleasure to observe, and his fraught but chic chemistry with Seyfried may have viewers rooting for his or her joyful ending. Cummings performs haunted with note-perfect precision, whether or not it is Kacey’s demons taking tragic root or the character’s resilient, steely spine.

Lengthy Shiny River indicators a paradigm shift within the crime style that different sequence can be smart to comply with. A remarkably gripping thriller and an exquisitely tender household drama, the sequence does its breathlessly daunting objectives justice regardless that it lacks sure key viewpoints. With regards to the views it does spotlight, this compact, delicate, and gut-wrenching restricted sequence approaches exploited social teams with empathy and with out judgment — a philosophy that needs to be necessary, not the uncommon exception.

All eight episodes of Lengthy Shiny River premiere March 13 on Peacock.