Under The Banner of Heaven.
Greg and Zanna watch the greatest Mormon murder series of modern times.
SCORES
Number of superior true crime dramas: 0
Number of true crime dramas with more Mormons: 0
SHE SAW
There's Dan and Allen and Ron and Robin and Samuel and Jacob, all of them Lafferty brothers, all of them quite similar-looking - and then there's all of their wives too - with Greg's face blindness, the chances of him following this series at all are quite slim. Thank goodness for Bill Taba, the Native American police officer, for providing some sweet relief from trying to figure out who's who and proving that diverse casting isn't only necessary but also quite handy from the viewer's perspective.
This is true crime though, and the truth can be inconvenient to dramatise. You might expect the screenwriter to lose a few brothers for the sake of succinct storytelling but instead creator Dustin Lance Black, who adapted the series from the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, has added a fictional protagonist, Detective Jeb Pyre, played superbly by Andrew Garfield. Black was raised Mormon and this isn't his first venture into Mormon stories having written on Big Love, the long-running series about a polygomous Mormon family. Garfield's character stands in for all the good Mormons - all the caffeine and alcohol-deprived God-fearing good guys who aren't trying to kill anyone. And that's necessary because the Laffertys were religious extremists and not good PR for the Mormon church.
The crime at the centre of this series, the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her baby Erica, is revealed early and not too graphically, which I appreciated. Brenda is played by Daisy Edgar-Jones of Normal People fame, who appears in flashbacks - the primary device used to tell this story. There are three timelines - the present-day detective case, the recent history of the Lafferty family that will ultimately lead to the solving of the crime, and the story of Joseph Smith and the beginnings of the Mormon church. The story of the Lafferty family is by far the most compelling, it's the heart of the crime, so of course it is. The formation of the Mormon church scenes feel a bit clunky at times but the series otherwise feels slick and well written so I trust Black knows where he's going with it.
The performances are impeccable in what is an intense and dark show. Presenting the two sides of the Mormon spectrum does ultimately bring up some philosophical questions about religion and its role in society: when religion motivates some of the most heinous crimes in history, on balance can it still be considered a source for good? You probably won't find your answer to that question in this series but it'll have you thinking and, beyond that, highly entertained.
HE SAW
We've heard and seen so many stories about humans doing the most shocking things imaginable that we can no longer be shocked or even mildly surprised by what people do to each other. Nevertheless, we are constantly drawn back to stories about them.
"Why do people do what they do?" is the question at the heart of all storytelling and the most heightened form of that question is: "Why do people do the worst thing imaginable?" Our strongest desire is to understand each other, and thereby ourselves, and how better to do that than to see us at our darkest?
Most of the best true crime shows in recent years have been docuseries: The Jinx, Making a Murderer, The Staircase, Wild Wild Country, Tiger King, McMillions and on and on. It's hard to think of a drama as immediately and continuously gripping and multifaceted as the first two episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven.
The first episode has everything: horrific double murder of baby and mother, immediate suspect, doubt thrown upon immediate suspect, problematic relationships between cop and suspect and cop and partner, weird religious s***, mysterious family with all sorts of problems we can't yet figure out but that are obviously already very bad and bound to get worse.
Our expectations are constantly confounded, undercut and expanded. The first two episodes are shot through with a deep uneasiness about everyone we meet, both in the present and in the multitudinous flashbacks. Some of this is to do with the fact we know what's coming, but a good chunk of it comes from the characters' deep weirdnesses and the buried emotions apparent in so many of their interactions.
Through it all is the connective tissue of Mormonism that unites the main cop, the victim, the main suspect and the main suspect's huge and messed-up family, while dividing the main cop from his disbelieving offsider. The show features occasional expositional flashbacks to the founding of Mormonism and at this stage it's not clear why, but let's just accept that Mormonism and a rudimentary understanding of its underpinnings is going to play a big part in what's going to happen.
The second episode delves more deeply into the messed up family of the suspect and victims and raises so many questions, about so many people and relationships, at such speed, it's impossible to watch it and not feel an immediate desire for the next episode, but Disney is cruelly releasing the series week by week as if it's still 2002, so you'll have to.
Under The Banner of Heaven is streaming now on Disney+