Starring Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Gil Burningham, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Wyatt Russell, Denise Gough, Billy Howle, Chloe Pirrie, Seth Numrich, Adelaide Clemens and Rory Culkin.
Written by Dustin Lance Black, Brandon Boyce, Gina Welch & Emer Gillespie.
Directed by David Mackenzie, Courtney Hunt, Dustin Lance Black, Isabel Sandoval & Thomas Schlamme.
I didn't want to write a review until I'd seen all 7 episodes and saw how they landed the plane. Dustin Lance Black (Milk, Big Love) has taken Jon Krakauer's nonfiction bestseller and fictionalized it for dramatic effect. Did I like the series? Overall, yes. But I'm also so familiar with the culture it's trying to recreate and the history it's trying to tell that I don't know how the show is for people outside of Utah who've never been Mormon. Reviews have overall been positive so I think it's doing its job that way. Let's get into it.
Krakauer's 2003 book took the Lafferty case, where brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty killed their sister-in-law Brenda and their 15-month-old niece Erica in 1984, and used it to condemn The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a whole, primarily the fundamentalist offshoots it inspires. It's fairly straightforward, but it spends as much time on Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as it does Ron and Dan Lafferty.
Here, the miniseries approaches it like a mystery. The central character is a fictitious cop named Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), a believing Mormon whose own faith is shook by the case and the truths he learns about the origins of the Church. The Laffertys had a lot of sons, and he doesn't know if it was Brenda's husband Allen (Billy Howle) or any of the other four Lafferty brothers. They take enough liberties with the 1984 facts that they change the names of one of the brothers and the father. They also use Allen as a Basil Exposition to the whole affair. Allen himself never lost his testimony in the Church in real life, but here he's a deeply cynical widower who seems more concerned about spelling out "the truth about" 1800's Mormonism for Pyre (complete with ominous background music) than figuring how who killed his wife and daughter.
There's a lot of heavy lifting in the dialogue, and for me it wound up being one of the weaker elements of the show. I lived in Utah for part of 1984, but I moved to Texas a few weeks before the Lafferty murders and so have no memory hearing about the case. Culturally they get a lot of things right, but there are anachronisms that could take me out. (Mormons don't say "Heavenly Father" THAT much.) As the series progresses it does a good job of showing how fundamentalism and the mainstream church are at odds. Of course, the only villains in the show I'd describe as cartoonish are the church leaders. (No General Authority in 1984 would bring up the Mountain Meadows Massacre, let alone try to spin it as a positive.)
As far as the facts go, well, I bring up the aforementioned liberties. It puts forth a bizarre theory that Brigham Young and John Taylor conspired to have Joseph Smith killed so Brigham could take over the church. I think even Brigham's staunchest critics would raise their eyebrows to that. (And why on Earth would Taylor be in the room to get shot four times if that was his plan?)
The acting? Top-notch. Garfield really pulled me in as Pyre, and David Mackenzie vet Gil Burningham (Hell or High Water) is great as the non-Mormon Paiute detective who has to tread through all this weirdness to get to just the facts, ma'am, while putting up with bearded dudes calling him a Lamanite. Sam Worthington's journey as Ron from regular guy to fundamentalist killer is calibrated just right, and Wyatt Russell as Dan shows he's destined for future stardom. (His parents Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn must be proud.) Daisy Edgar-Jones made me wish she had more screen-time as Brenda. She's the normal Mormon wife who finds herself trapped in a family that's getting more and more dangerous and doesn't know how to cool the temperatures of everyone involved.
Worth seeing? Yes. There's plenty in here to chew on and debate and discuss, which is part of what makes good TV.
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