I knew there was a possibility when
the fall season began that I was going to eventually end up watching Apple TV’s
limited series Black Bird. I thought I might end up doing it out of
sentiment considering that it features one of the final performances of the
incredible character actor Ray Liotta. Then this past month, the limited series
began to make inroad in the major awards circuits. It earned multiple
nominations from the Critic Choice Awards for Liotta and Paul Walter Hauser. Then
it received nominations from the Golden Globes for Hauser, lead actor Taron Egerton
and for Best Limited Series. Now that it looks like a major contender for next
year’s Emmys, I figured now was the time to start watching it.
Had I been aware at the time that the
showrunner was Dennis Lehane, one of my favorite mystery writers of all time
and a major force in both Peak TV and films, I might have thrown caution to the
wind and started watching in August when it first premiered. In hindsight, I’m
glad I waited. I have spent much of 2022 engaged in television’s somewhat more
light-hearted affairs, and I’m not sure I would have wanted to go into the
darkest levels of true crime, no matter how well written at that point of the
year. Now I am prepared to go into the heart of darkness.
The series is based off the
memoirs of Jimmy Keene (Egerton) a former high school athlete in Chicago, who
when we first meet him has essentially become a drug-dealer and arms runner for
a very disconnected mobster. (Good to see Lee Tergesen working). One night,
after getting laid, he is busted by the FBI and Agent McCauley, who he’s
clearly on a first name basis with. Facing heavy charges, he is convinced by
his father (Liotta) a retired corrupt cop to take a plea deal for five years.
The DA double crosses him at the sentencing and puts him in for ten.
Several months later, Jimmy is
approached by McCauley and the DA (veteran character actor Robert Wisdom). The two make him an offer he’d very much like
to refuse: go to a maximum security prison and convince a man they believe is
guilty of at least thirteen murders of young girls to confess the locations of
the bodies before his appeal is handled. Jimmy very much wants to tell them
where to put their deal, but McCauley leaves him the file.
Much of the first two episodes
involves the initial investigation into the murder of the first girl. The investigation is handled by Chief
Inspector Brian Miller (Greg Kinnear doing his best work in years). From the
start, it becomes clear that Miller is an average detective but is clearly the
only police man who has the right ideas and is thinking clearly. Slowly he
latches on to the idea of a suspect, a janitor named Larry Hall (Hauser). When
he goes to town, it becomes clear how badly the process has been mishandled: a
local detective is sure he's on the wrong track. Detectives from Illinois
investigating another murder have arrested another suspect and think Larry is a
waste of time, even though he confessed to a couple of murders before. Though admittedly the moment we see Hall it’s
hard to imagine anyone thinking of him as ‘harmless’.
Hauser’s work is clearly the
master class everyone thinks it is. Enormous in size with bushy sideburn, he affects
a tone so soft spoken and a demeanor so seemingly disconnected from reality
then when he tells the detectives he dreams about killing women, you almost
believe he’s telling the truth. The local detectives are fooled and are
prepared to arrest someone else for the crime. Miller goes to McCauley and Beaumont
and they end up getting Hall in a room alone. In a matter of minutes, he
confesses to a completely different murder than they want and they get him to
sign a confession for it. Not long
after, they search his home and find no corroborating evidence and the fact
that his twin brother Gary is utterly convinced that his brother is innocent –
mainly because he thinks he’s an idiot.
What the FBI and the AG are
trying to do with Jimmy is little more than a Hail Mary. (When McCauley calls
Miller to tell him about, he dismisses her: “What you’re doing isn’t police
work. It’s desperation.”) If Jimmy was more savvy, he might have caught up on
the fact that he goes from being ‘auditioned’ to recruited in a matter of days,
but he’s got his own concerns. Not only can he not stand being in prison his
father has suffered a massive stroke and
may not have much time left. In a critical decision, his father does not learn
about Jimmy taking the deal until his son has already been transferred. Jimmy
is clearly not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, but that’s okay
because we don’t entirely trust the law enforcement people involved. (I suspect
that he may have been given this harsher sentence by the AG in order to force
him into this position. I don’t know if I’ll be proven correct.)
There was a great deal of obsession
and controversy about Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer, which has
also received several nominations from the Golden Globes. I have no interest in
watching the former and am primarily drawn to Black Bird because so much
of its focus is on Jimmy and not Hall, at least in the first two episodes.
Egerton, known for playing the dapper young lead in Kingsman and for his
Golden Globe winning role as Elton John, is practically unrecognizable as Keene.
It’s not just that his naturally classy demeanor is diminished in prison
clothes or his American accent, it’s his perfect balance of cockiness in the
outside world and the fear and claustrophobia that prison has done to him. When
he is being transferred to the maximum security prison, he’s cocky and joking
on the plane ride there and even in the drive up to the doors – and at last
minute gets a serious case of stage fright that is by far the most human we’ve
seen him throughout the series. We don’t
really like Jimmy, but when we see him in his new home, we feel something close
to sympathy as he and the audience realize just how over his head he is.
The rest of the performances
are spot on all the way down. Hauser’s work is, as I mentioned, quietly
disturbing and fascinating. Even knowing what he’s done, I’m still having a
great deal of trouble believing Larry’s a killer, particularly in a
marvelous scene near the end of the second episode where he discusses almost
amicably the condition of a boiler with a guard. Save for the uniforms both are
wearing, their attitudes are such that this could be a typical workplace
conversation and that’s because it almost seems like the guard, who spends his
days among the scum of the earth and who has to know why Hall is there, as if
he is harmless. Liotta is very good in
the few scenes he has, and we’re picking up on a very troubled relationship between
father and son, one that Liotta keeps saying is understood. Unnoticed by awards so far has been the work
of Kinnear, whose everyman quality and dogged pursuit of justice almost seems
out of place in Peak TV. I hope they find a way to nominate him the same way
that Hauser and Liotta are likely to earn nominations.
I’m still not completely
certain whether Black Bird deserves to be ranked among the best limited
series of the year. It has something of a slow pace which doesn’t seem fitting
for a series that only has six episodes. Then again, considering that there is
now clock for the investigation the pace will accelerate. I have an idea how
the series ends – this is after all based on a nonfiction best seller written
by James Keene, which makes it highly unlikely he’ll be in a body bag by the
end. And I have faith Lehane, who spent
so many years under the tutelage of David Simon at HBO knows exactly how to
bring the best stories to conclusion. I spent a lot of time and energy this
year writing articles about how so many series about serial killers are not
that interesting or get it wrong in the long run. The fact that Black Bird is
spending as much time with the man trying to get answers – and making it just
as clear that no one at any stage in this has their hands entirely clean –
makes me think that this might be one of the exceptions to the rule.
My score: 4.25 stars.
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