There comes a moment towards the end of Black Bird’s second episode, where Taron Egerton’s character Jimmy Keene settles into his new life at a maximum security prison, that really encapsulates the show.
The bars slide shut in front of his face. It’s dark, but it’s not quiet. As he settles on his prison mattress, the sounds of the prison continue around him: whoops, cheers and screams.
He gets up; sits down again. He can’t sleep – and across the room his target, suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), makes his way to bed to sleep soundly.
It’s a quiet character moment, but one that demonstrates the quality of the actors in the scene. Every emotion plays itself across Jimmy’s face; nothing is revealed on Larry’s.
And in the morning, Jimmy will attempt to get on with his task - befriending Larry to find out where the many victims he is suspected of killing are buried - for a reduced prison sentence in return, and a chance to see his ailing father before he dies.
Astoundingly, this is a true story – the show itself is adapted from Jimmy Keene’s memoir In With the Devil. In the book, Keene (who also serves as executive producer) accepted a plea deal from the authorities and was moved to a prison for the criminally insane to try and extract Hall’s confession before his appeal was filed.
I hadn’t read the book so did not know which way the story was going to go - and it made for gripping viewing.
The actors inhabit their roles convincingly; Egerton plays Jimmy with staggering cockiness, weaving in just enough uncertainty (and, on his way to prison, naked fear) to let us see through the cracks in his armour every so often. This is a game player very much out of his depth.
Black Bird is a redemption story first and foremost – as you’d expect, with the original Jimmy Keene involved – and Egerton’s Jimmy remains just about likeable enough to root for as the series goes on.
The show also includes the last TV appearance by Ray Liotta, who delivers a barnstorming performance as Jimmy’s decidedly morally-grey (and ailing) ex-cop father that makes you miss him all the more.
The show takes its time to get going, but that’s no bad thing, allowing the viewer to sink into the action as the different narratives gradually wind closer and closer together.
We see Jimmy’s fall from grace as he is framed for a drugs deal gone wrong. Elsewhere, detectives Brian Miller (an on-form Greg Kinnear) and Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi, who does her best with the awkward flirting that seems shoehorned into the script) doggedly working the case of an unsolved murder that eventually leads them to Hall’s door – though their colleagues remain convinced Hall is a harmless oddball.
Some of the show’s best scenes come from Walker’s Larry, whose mumbles and tics hint at a terrifying instability that only gets more chilling as the series goes on.
Watching him in the interrogation room, or interacting with Jimmy in the prison yard, is nail-biting television that had me on the edge of my seat.
A very classy piece of work, by all accounts – and once you get used to the stately pace, it is impossible to look away.
