Amanda Seyfried in Peacock Mystery

Everything isn’t sunny in Philadelphia on the small display this week.

Both Apple TV+’s Dope Thief — assessment coming Thursday — and Peacock‘s Long Bright River set tales of blue-collar homicide and distress in opposition to the relative hopefulness of the sophisticated relationships between their two primary characters.

One of the reveals begins extraordinarily nicely, with its deal with that central relationship, however struggles in its second half. The different struggles by means of its first half, however resolves moderately nicely as soon as it makes its solution to what was all the time presupposed to be the center of the story.

The second sequence is Long Bright River, which closes with two emotionally efficient episodes that largely hit their goal, regardless of some over-obvious plot twists; a climax that’s a lesser model of the ending of a greater status drama from final yr; and a laughable second in which anyone lastly will get round to saying the sequence’ title. I bought slightly teary on the decision of the story of sisterhood, dependancy and selections, if not on the finish of the homicide thriller.

And if that sounds prefer it’s damning with faint reward? Sure! Nikki Toscano and Liz Moore’s adaptation of Moore’s novel is well-meaning, however bloated. You might minimize the primary six episodes of Long Bright River all the way down to 4 with ease and down to 2 with the type of ruthless effectivity {that a} story like this actually deserves in this format.

For the primary episode or two, Long Bright River feels oddly like a spin-off of ABC’s The Rookie, with Amanda Seyfried enjoying Mickey, a Philly-raised beat cop patrolling her previous Kensington neighborhood with Eddie (Dash Mihok), a new-to-the-gig 40-something with no understanding of the protocols or social niceties of the job. For her half, Mickey is aware of the identify of each addict and intercourse employee, understanding that empathy is essential to the job, or not less than it may be.

As is all the time the case in tales like this, Mickey’s empathy isn’t naturally occurring. She has a private connection to the drug customers and prostitutes, due to years watching her sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) fall deeper and deeper into this world.

Mickey, who loves the English horn to distraction (the distraction of the present’s writers, not her distraction), has a precocious son (Callum Vinson’s Thomas), who doesn’t know Kacey exists and is starting to surprise why he has no household apart from his jovial, Yuengling-loving great-grandfather Gee (John Doman). It seems that “the opioid crisis” is an advanced subject to spell out for a seven-year-old.

Anyway, issues flip the wrong way up for Mickey when ladies from The Avenue begin turning up lifeless on the similar time Kacey goes lacking. Nobody else goes to take the demise of some junkies critically, however Mickey is full of empathy and private motivation. Looking for anyone she will be able to belief, she turns to Truman (Nicholas Pinnock), a former companion who was damage in some incident which may have been not less than partially Mickey’s fault, although neither the incident nor the harm nor the factor the place Mickey freezes in high-stakes moments is ever talked about once more after the primary episode.

You know what’s talked about repeatedly? “Choices.”

Long Bright River loves literary conceit with little consideration as as to whether such conceits play as nicely in tv storytelling. The first episode options Mickey educating Thomas about Faust (simpler than “the opioid crisis”) and offers with the satan (she’s an odd, however very engaged mom). In a flashback to 2017, Truman offers Mickey a lesson on choice-making programs. Then characters spend the following seven episodes debating which behaviors are chosen, that are ingrained into our psychology or physiology, and largely simply saying “choice” so much.

It isn’t that Long Bright River isn’t conscious of the distinction between literary gadgets and televisual gadgets. Director Hagar Ben-Asher, who additionally helms the fifth episode, introduces The Avenue with haunting photographs of unhoused encampments and their denizens earlier than exhibiting us what life is like on the opposite facet of the tracks by taking the digicam over literal railroad tracks. OK. That was slightly foolish, however I really cherished that one of many first photographs of Mickey and Kacey collectively options them on reverse sides of a comfort retailer fridge door, suggesting the literal sliding door of destiny separating the instructions their lives have taken.

The sequence is about two sisters, however for the primary half of the season, even by splitting the narrative right into a bunch of flashbacks, Long Bright River can’t discover a solution to make that relationship rise to the floor. The flashbacks are too clumsy, too apparent and, sadly, a bit poorly forged. I do know that Amanda Seyfried’s distinctive look isn’t straightforward to reflect, however when there are youthful variations of characters who’ve zero resemblance to the older variations, you’ve didn’t type the connective tissue that makes the flashbacks worthwhile. At no level did I ever really feel just like the Mickey and Kacey in the flashbacks had something to do with the present-day Mickey and Kacey. And it is advisable!

So a lot of the primary 4 episodes is spent on establishing the largely uninteresting relationship between Mickey and Truman, who is outwardly on administrative go away and has nothing to do apart from lend Mickey a hand as she engages in an off-the-books investigation. I can’t say if Truman has a component on the web page, however onscreen it’s like anyone determined “Well, his name is Truman, because he’s the only True Man…” and referred to as it a day. When it involves flaws, he’s a playing addict and also you suppose it will repay in some significant method, and it doesn’t.

Then there’s a complete episode — the fourth — in which Truman, a Black Philadelphian, and Mickey, a resident of a broken-down neighborhood in Philadelphia, spend nearly a full hour being repeatedly perplexed by the thought of police corruption, as if it’s one thing new and beforehand unconsidered for them each. This isn’t a solution to get me to respect two characters and their potential to grasp the world round them.

I really like prickly, sophisticated, unlikable characters. I’m much less enamored with prickly, sophisticated, unlikable characters whom writers require to be always apologizing for themselves, which feels prefer it’s all Mickey does for eight hours. In the episode titled “Atonement”? I get it! But dwell in the messiness slightly. Sometimes folks simply make errors.

None of that is Seyfried’s fault. Mickey isn’t presupposed to be pure police, however Seyfried conveys nearly effortlessly what may nonetheless make her good at this job inside her discomfort. She’s bought a candy rapport with Vinson and her scenes with Doman are top-notch.

Doman, Philadelphia born-and-raised, lifts the general degree of Philly authenticity so much, particularly for a present that was largely shot in New York and feels extra “Urban Northeast” than Philly-specific. I appreciated a subplot involving Mummers. And I feel it’s deliberately hilarious that in one scene, Mickey — Seyfried not doing any accent in any respect — goes to Thanksgiving with what’s clearly the PHILADELPHIA facet of the household, the place everyone is all Delco’d out, speaking concerning the Iggles and wooter and whatnot. I used to be much less amused in one scene in which Mickey visits anyone they usually ask, “Want a Tastykake or something?” What KIND of Tastykake? Sure I desire a peanut butter Kandy Kake, but when all you could have is a jelly Krimpet? Nah.

It makes an enormous distinction when Cummings turns into a extra energetic a part of the sequence. She retroactively grounds a number of the flashbacks in her wounded disappointment and provides the whole story an undercurrent that the misery-porn therapy of the ladies on The Avenue largely hadn’t achieved to that time. She doesn’t raise the present; she balances it.

It takes too lengthy to get there. Too lengthy to weed by means of pink herrings and convolutions in the thriller that ultimately border on irrelevant. Too lengthy spent circling characters the present by no means bothers to develop, like Mickey’s best-friend-when-the-narrative-requires-but-otherwise-invisible Aura (Britne Oldford). Or the widely first rate detective (Joe Daru’s Danjarat), whom you retain anticipating to serve a objective past “general decency” (although I assume if he did, there could be two “true men” in the story).

That Seyfried and Cummings are capable of take audiences to any type of satisfying vacation spot is admirable and even rewarding. But not even they will make you neglect how a lot better this too-long, insufficiently brilliant journey might have been.