When Amanda Seyfried was on “The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon” final week, she carried out an unimaginable cowl of Joni Mitchell’s “California,” taking part in the dulcimer and hitting all the best notes along with her vocals, and my prompt thought was we want Amanda Seyfried starring in a Joni Mitchell biopic titled “Courtroom and Spark,” directed by James Mangold of “Stroll the Line” and “A Full Unknown” fame, and may we get to work on that, please and thanks.
It’s been a quarter-century since Seyfried began doing TV roles on soaps and a few 21 years since she made her movie debut in “Imply Ladies.” She has displayed exceptional vary as an actor on screens huge and small, in initiatives together with “Alpha Canine,” the “Mamma Mia!” motion pictures, “Jennifer’s Physique,” “Les Misérables,” “Lovelace,” “First Reformed,” “Mank” and “The Dropout,” the latter of which earned a Golden Globe and an Emmy for Seyfried’s portrayal of fraudulent Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Within the gritty and resonant eight-part Peacock collection “Lengthy Vivid River,” Seyfried does a number of the best and strongest work of her profession, and can absolutely be in all of the TV awards conversations as soon as once more. With Nikki Toscano (“The Supply,” “Hunters”) as showrunner on this adaptation of the novel of the identical identify by Liz Moore and Seyfried heading an impressive ensemble solid, “Lengthy Vivid River” is paying homage to “Mare of Easttown” in that it’s a fictional depiction of working-class Philadelphians that feels genuine to its very core.
Seyfried’s Mickey is a Philadelphia police officer who had nice potential as a musician when she was youthful, however sidelined these ambitions resulting from monetary and household problems. Mickey’s dad and mom had been drug addicts; her mom died when she and her youthful sister had been youngsters, and their late father was by no means within the image, leaving them to be raised by their hard-nosed and generally flinty however goodhearted grandfather (John Doman).
In current day, Mickey is a single mom with a precocious 8-year-old son named Thomas (Callum Vinson), and he or she patrols the neighborhood of Kensington the place she grew up, doing her greatest to look out for the younger ladies who’re intercourse employees, hooked on medication and dwelling on the streets. (Manufacturing values are first-rate, with New York Metropolis filling in for Philadelphia.) Mickey has a brand new companion in Lafferty (Sprint Mihok), who has joined the police drive comparatively late in life and has a sort of unnerving sincerity about him, however she’s extra trusting of her former companion, Truman (Nicholas Pinnock), who’s on depart from the drive and battling his personal demons, however is all the time able to lend Mickey a hand.
When various younger ladies are discovered useless in speedy succession, apparently from overdoses, Mickey suspects there may be a serial killer on the free, and he or she enlists Truman’s assist in investigating the case and trying to find Mickey’s sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), who has an extended historical past of dependancy courting again to when she was in her early teenagers.
Nicely-timed flashback sequences fill us in on the complicated relationship between Mickey and Kacey, and the traumatic experiences that knowledgeable each of their histories. Within the present-day sequences, there’s a hardscrabble realism permeating each scene, e.g., a Thanksgiving Day gathering the place Kacey reconnects along with her prolonged household, and plenty of within the group are carrying Eagles jerseys and downing beers within the chilly yard. (The ladies on this neighborhood are simply as foul-mouthed and difficult as the lads. Possibly more durable, given all of the s- – – they must undergo.)
At instances, the reveals in “Lengthy Vivid River” are a bit heavy-handed, as after we be taught the identification of a sure key determine in Mickey’s life, and we see this individual in flashback sequences, simply to verify everybody understands who it’s. There’s additionally one explicit pink herring that feels off and a bit pressured. General, although, this can be a tense and at instances brutally uncooked thriller thriller that retains us guessing till the enormously satisfying finale. Seyfried is nothing in need of phenomenal as Mickey, who has the load of the world on her shoulders and appears to need it that method, as if permitting herself to get pleasure from life would imply she’s misplaced concentrate on the one issues that matter to her: defending her son and discovering her sister. This is among the greatest TV collection of the younger yr.
