Occasionally, mean girls turn murderous – very occasionally, though, this rarity offers no comfort to the victims’ devastated families. Such was the case in 1997, in Saanich, British Columbia, when 14-year-old Reena Virk was beaten by six teenage girls and killed by another and a teenage boy. Under the Bridge is an eight-part dramatised version of this true story, based on the 2005 non-fiction book about it by journalist Rebecca Godfrey, (played here by Daisy Jones and the Six’s Riley Keough, showcasing her flinty strengths).
Reena (a fine performance by Vritika Gupta, comprising all the overconfidence and insecurities that make adolescents so vulnerable even when they have no other aggravating circumstances to contend with) is a troubled teen. She is banished to all sorts of peripheries by her race (her father Manjit, played by Ezra Faroque Khan, is an immigrant from India, her mother Suman, played by Archie Panjabi, Indo-Canadian) and her religion (Suman is Jehovah’s Witness among a primarily Sikh community within an overwhelmingly white area). So the allure of the tight-knit gang of girls from the local group home is strong.
