2 out of 5

Developed by: Derek Simonds

Okay, TV, this is a good example of your limitations: a mini-series based on a novel, Sinner – whether employing a structure from its source or not – is absolutely relying on its core “What happened and Why?” mystery to trigger week-to-week intrigue.  Unfortunately, despite some well conceived editing and great performances from leads Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman, Sinner never actually earns its intrigue through its story.  If not for the show’s promotional tagline (“Everyone knows she did it.  No one knows why.”), I’m not even sure I would’ve thought there was more to the story than a lie-occluded murder motive.  When Biel – as socially muted mother Cora, is at the beach with her husband and daughter, then suddenly triggered into a rage by a song (Big Black Delta!) she leaves in her furious wake a much-stabbed corpse, a befuddled spouse, and a curious, on-the-ropes, crappy-marriage trope-much cop, Harry Ambrose, played by Billy “great beard” Pullman..  Of course, as these things go, Ambrose has his own personality quirks, namely an S&M fling with a mistress that he continually tries to put off in order to fix things with his wife.  Sinner revels in degrading Pullman, using any failure – of which he has many, piqued by Biel’s case when everyone, Biel included, just wants to accept her guilt and be shut away – to have him scurry off to his mistress and get his hands stomped on.  The parallels to flashbacks Biel begins to have to past abuses – possible triggers for her actions, Sinner slaps us to understand – are blatant, but as much as the show wants to be an effective study of a type of severe PTSD, it’s equally sort of shallowly manipulative.  It then tries to counter this by doubling down on being  mysterious, but it just amounts to withheld information, and nothing too revelatory beyond what can be assumed from initial episodes.  The reason I suspect this is an adaptation mishap is because much of Biel’s background is frightfully fascinating, but the show unsatisfyingly leans into these scenario dumps, leaving us in flashback foe indeterminate periods that feel randomly cut I to the show just to space things out.  We are robbed of connection to our modern day principles as a result, and left wondering why we were just shown scene A, B or C, despite its content being interesting.

Well acted but poorly executed.  Not every show has to be an event.