4 out of 5

Preceded by: Lizzie Borden Took an Axe, written by Stephen Kay

Well, shucks, like many modern, stream-savvy folk, I watch quite a bit of TV nowadays, new and old.  I’ll discover things after the fact and enjoy them; I’ll champion things as they happen.  But even with a lot of great stuff out there, I have to admit that a great majority of it is still, essentially, disposable, in the sense that if it went away mid-season, I’d just hiccup and shuffle along to next-in-queue.

I haven’t seen the movie preceding The Lizzie Borden Chronicles; it may have prepared me for the experience curve of the modern soundtrack set to 1890s events, or the way it sort of B-movie cherishes its gore.  But I doubt it could have prepared me for how I felt after getting over that curve: that I wanted to watch episode after episode, of Christina Ricci masterfully tongue-in-cheeking this very fictionalized Borden representation, slashing her way through any and every inconvenience in her life post her notorious trial; when the sole season ended, I was sad that there wasn’t more.

No, we’re not talking Breaking Bad brilliance here, by any means; the setup is pretty much as described above: someone comes close to discovering something about Lizzie’s past, or prevents her from sitting pretty with her sister (Clea Duvall), or is just kinda sorta mean to her, and she arranges for them to have an “accident”, either doing the deed herself or hiring someone to do it.  (And then likely offing them as well.)  The show is quite hilarious in its consistency with this, and is also part of that experience curve, as the tone isn’t necessarily camp – everyone is putting in a dedicated performance – and so when it sets out, you’re kind of expecting Chronicles to play coy with its murders, but nope, Lizzie’s right there, episode one, episode two, and so on, adding to her bodycount.  Cole Hauser shows up as a roughshod Pinkerton, gunning for Lizzie, and is essentially the season’s Big Bad, but the show’s writers clearly had ways of expanding things, adding other foes who would’ve likely been more prominent in a following season.

There’s a bit of ‘convenience’ in how Lizzie will leave one or two crucial details dotting her otherwise meticulously plotted murder scenes, but the show quite makes up for these bumps with excellent production design (I never stopped marveling at the layers and layers of clothing Ricci and Duvall wore, acting effortlessly through it) and well-defined characters, and a good sense of forward momentum that prevents the essentially repeating cycle of kills and coverups from ever feeling repetitive.

I guess it’s too late to start some kind of petition for this to be picked up by another station, eh?