You may feel maxed out on true-crime drama at the moment, and I would entirely understand if so. Recent offerings have included stories of murder (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile gave yet more prominence to Ted Bundy while The Serpent followed drug dealer and serial killer Charles Sobhraj), miscarriages of justice (When They See Us, about the Central Park Five), the human suffering caused by greed and corruption (Dopesick, about the US opioid crisis), and various manifestations of misogyny and testaments to endemic sexual violence (Unbelievable, Lost Girls, The Staircase). But it’s well worth girding your loins to go one more round with dramatised depravity for the new limited series Black Bird (Apple TV+).
Developed by crime writer Dennis Lehane from James Keene’s 2010 memoir In With the Devil, it stars Taron Egerton as Keene – acquitting himself brilliantly in a part that is as about as far removed from his last starring role as Elton John in Rocketman as it is possible to be.
Little Jimmy Keene is the charming/arrogant, high-flying, drug-dealing son of long-serving police officer Big Jim (Ray Liotta, in one of his last roles). Little Jimmy’s carefree days come to an abrupt end when his apartment is raided, his father’s connections and a plea bargain don’t deliver, and he ends up facing 10 years in prison without parole. A few months into his sentence, FBI agent Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi) offers him a deal. He is to move to a maximum-security facility largely populated by the criminally insane for as long as it takes to befriend and elicit a confession from suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), before Hall’s appeal goes through and he is released. McCauley thinks Jimmy has the charm and intelligence to succeed, and if he does, he will be allowed to go free.
All of this takes about an episode and a half, which may feel a touch too slow for many viewers. But it’s worth the investment. We first meet Larry – a man with clear cognitive deficiencies but exquisitely pitched and acted without any recourse to the usual tics or tropes – in flashback, during the FBI investigations headed by Detective Brian Miller (Greg Kinnear) and seconded by McCauley. Larry is a serial confessor to various crimes, but did he actually commit the murders of up to 14 girls that they suspect him of?
It is when Jimmy and Larry meet up in prison that Black Bird really begins to take flight. Suspicion gives way to tolerance, becomes fragile friendship and then moves on to something much more sinuous and slippery. As doubts come and go among the FBI and police about Larry’s guilt or innocence, Jimmy is increasingly horrified by the points of connection between them. There are wonderful two-handers that begin with Jimmy leading the conversation where he wants it to go, only to find himself swung up and around by Larry’s apparent free-associating thoughts and deposited in front of a dark mirror to face an unwelcome truth. Lehane is a renowned thriller writer and was a writer on The Wire but this allusive, switchbacking dialogue may be his finest work yet.
Add to the central conceit a corrupt guard intent on extorting money from Jimmy, and assorted other prisoners out for what blood they can get, and you have plenty of action to keep things going. And amid it all is Liotta as the tough father who is broken by having failed his son, unable to pull him out of the mire and facing his own set of unwelcome truths in the sudden stillness forced upon him. He breaks your heart. It’s a fine note to leave on.
