One of the most enduring genres of television are “cop shows,” whether procedurals or crime dramas. Even in the wake of horrific cases of police violence and misconduct that have made national news, the calls for defunding a reform, the shows have endured. However, while these genres have always portrayed bad cops, or as a phrase they like to use, “bad apples,” before this decade, there was often a tendency to represent these bad apples as the outliers but the police as a whole as heroic. A recent shift has resulted in a more nuanced reflection on this concept. Long Bright River, is a new limed series (based on the novel by Liz Moore of the same name, who also co-created the series with Nikki Toscano) that reflects this trend. Long Bright River, follows a cop, Mickey (played by Amanda Seyfried) who comes from an area of Philadelphia where drugs have ravaged the community. She is the only local cop on the force who knows the people on the street because she grew up with them, and we’ll discover she has a younger sister, Kacey (played by Ashleigh Cummings) who is an addict so it is personal for her. So, she looks further when someone presents as an overdose and finds the signs of murder, and links to other girls who have died, making it a serial case.
The series is drawn out in past and present as Mickey works through her past with Kacey to try and find her in the present, hoping to reach her before she becomes a victim of the killer. As we learn more about Mickey’s past, we understand more of her estrangement from her family and, despite her desire to look out for the people in her community, how the distance was formed through childish ignorance and then grooming from someone when she’s vulnerable. A major core wound in the series is at the hands of the character Simon (played by Matthew Del Negro), a cop who meets Mickey when she is a teen in a police youth club. They do this great scene in the present when the clues point at Simon about how it is likely known that he was a groomer because he was removed from that police youth club like it was revealed priests that sexually abused children were moved to different dioceses.
This series is a lot about sisters, sisterhood, and motherhood. Mikey and Kacey lost their mother as young girls, with Kacey hardly remembering her mother when she was older, only through her sister’s memories of her. The series is driven by Mikey and her drive to find Kacey. And then, there is Mikey and her relationship with her son Thomas (played by Callum Vinson), who she is newly a single mother to, this relationship gains additional layers as the series unfolds. However, this isn’t the only sisterhood our motherhood the series explores. When Mikey begins to worry that Kacey could be in danger of a killer, it is because a girl with pink hair, like her sister, and two other women around her age have been killed in the area. Unfortunately, a serial killing makes for an unwelcome sisterhood. But then Mikey finds herself on the unsuspecting beatdown from a bunch of the girls she usually makes sure are okay on the street, another act of sisterhood. The finale has a last act of sisterhood that I will not spoil but builds on the previous acts of sisterhood. In regards to motherhood, there were these wonderful scenes with Mickey with old friends’ mothers and former classmates now mothers that not only provided more context to her past but did so without painting these women as bad moms because they were in abusive relationships or because their children were drug addicts/living on the street. These scenes presented them with care as women trying to do their best for their children, who they love. And, protecting them the best they can with the tools they have.
Amanda Seyfried gave a great performance (which those who have been watching since Veronica Mars and Mean Girls are not surprised by), but it was Nicholas Pinnock (as Truman), Ashleigh Cummings, and Callum Vinson who constantly changed the emotion of the scenes. Long Bright River is available on Peacock in the US and Crave in Canada.
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