3 out of 5

Created by: Quinn Shephard (developed by)

As I’ve stated regarding other dramatizations, the sticky area with such shows / movies is in finding the line between being entertaining and being exploitative. Under the Bridge – which uses Rebecca Godfrey’s book on the beating and death of Canadian teen Reena Virk as its main source – takes an oddly opposite tactic, of hardly making the event its focus. And I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than being exploitative.

To be fair, there are a lot of valuable stories here, and they are thematically linked. But by providing the crime up front, in which Virk was assaulted by several other local teens, and rewinding at various points to cover her experiences immediately leading up to that, we’re set up with a framework of focus on that event. Unfortunately, as-is lobbied at Godfrey, played by Riley Keough – a character in this dramatization, having come home to Canada to write about its troubled youth, and finding herself amidst the swirlings of this crime – she’s writing a book about Reena that doesn’t contain much Reena; the show feels rather the seem: as often as we might see Virk (Vritika Gupta) on screen, I’m not sure we ever “know” her. You could extract from that that that’s purposeful, but I’m not quite sure; given the show’s generally wayward focus, I think it’s intended to be a deeper character dive (for several of the main roles) than it actually is.

But I meant my question above: I’m not sure if this structure is actually better or worse. I think it’s flawed, because there’s an inevitability that requires us to get to the wrap-up courtroom scenes, and only so much room to turn real human beings into digestible character arcs, but it also allows for a fair amount of room to explore the world, and perhaps gives the actors some more opportunity to inhabit their roles as well, not stuck to a beat-by-beat script.

Indeed, these elements are what work for Under the Bridge, as the majority of the cast (in conjunction with their directors) add an incredibly amount to their parts, allowing us to be distracted from wondering exactly how whichever subplot is actually enriching our understanding, beyond “that’s interesting.” Individually, cop Cam’s (Lily Gladstone) quest for identity is gripping; the fomenting personalities amongst the teens hurt, in that we can surely recognize the growing pains, and see the line between ‘normal’ kid behavior and when it edges into extremes; the careful tip-toeing Reena’s parents do to maintain their beliefs and culture in a very, very white area. On the flipside, with our journey guided by Godfrey, this is kind of the most noxious and self-centered part of the story and thus condenses the overall narrative: Keough makes the author an eye-rolling mix of bravado and fragility, and while there might be truth in her portrayal – in the same way that ALL of this might be coming directly from the book – it’s not a very engaging point of view, and her fractured grasp of the narrative hangs over the show’s presentation of everything…

So it’s all very meta, but without feeling very purposeful about that; and it results in a series of generally incredibly acted, and very interesting sections, but not an influential whole – and that ultimately does feel kind of wrong when trying to represent a true-life crime.