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Review: Unbelievable on Netflix
Crime stories are to Hollywood as peanut butter is to jelly — reliable and almost always delicious.
Last night I tore through the new Netflix miniseries Unbelievable, starring Merritt Weaver and Toni Collette. The show takes you on an odyssey to catch a serial rapist. If you’re looking for a show that is spectacularly written, methodically paced and brilliantly acted, you don’t need to look any further than Unbelievable.
The show is based on the 2015 article An Unbelievable Story of Rape, written by T. Christian Miller and Kem Armstrong. Produced by writers Susannah Grant (Academy Award nominee for Erin Brockovitch), Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon (Pulitzer Prize winner for The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — also Waldman’s husband) have created a masterful piece of television.
The three producers share writing with Jennifer Shuur and Becky Mode on the eight-episode miniseries. It would be pretentious to call the writing in Unbelievable poetry. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a synonym that works as well, so poetry it is.
Given the pedigree of writers, it’s no wonder that the show’s writing is as riveting as it is. There is no fancy wordplay or lyrical grandstanding here. It’s just a solid and methodical narrative. The type of show that…
