Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Tom Payne, Michael Sheen, Lou Diamond Phillips, Halston Sage, Aurora Pettineau, Frank Harts, Keiko Agena, Bellamy Young, Esau Pritchett, Kasian Wilson, Molly Griggs, Anna Eilinsfeld, Charlayne Woodard, Giuseppe Ardizzone, Dermot Mulroney.
The life of the murderer has always intrigued the armchair detective to the point where it can blind them to a truth when the presence of a serial killer becomes aware to them. There is after all a fundamental difference between a one off taking of life to that of wilfully continuing the senseless slaughter of people, and whilst murder should never be condoned, never be seen as anything abhorrent, the armchair detective and the scandal magazine readers almost salivate over every detail of the serial killer’s purpose and belief, forgetting that underneath it all, are the victims, the stories behind the death.
It is in this blind pursuit of explaining the killer, that the story is muddied, that the personality of those engrained into the tale and investigation are misplaced; not only the dead, the murderer’s prey, but the family of the one person at the centre of the horror.
Prodigal Son expands on the myopic feel of other detective programmes by altering the dynamic between killer and detective by placing at the heart of the tale a relationship of father and son, and in the British leads, Tom Payne and Michael Sheen, the American series could not have aimed higher nor landed with such conviction the atmosphere of insidious and craving understanding, the fine blurred line that lays between good and evil, the knowledge that such wickedness and malevolence can be hereditary, is embedded into the D.N.A as one would understand that height, weight, eye colour is also one inherited, so the ability to take another life can also be genetic, can be devastating.
The premise of the series is aided brilliantly by the cast, which aside from the immaculate Michael Sheen and Tom Payne as Dr. Martin Whitley and Malcolm Bright, has the film star quality of Lou Diamond Phillips as Detective Gil Arroyo imbedded into the structure of the narrative, Halston Sage as Ainsley Whitley, the impressive Aurora Perrineau as Detective Dani Powell and the glorious Bellamy Young as Malcom’s mother and the former wife of the man the press called, The Surgeon.
To bring together a killer and a police profiler under the same roof could have been seen as extraordinary gamble, but as Prodigal Son shows handsomely in its first series, it is one that has paid off with extraordinary skill and belief.
Murder most foul, but one that reminds the armchair detective that behind the killing is a name of a victim, perhaps not one that has died, but still one who feels the repercussions of the initial act.
Ian D. HallÂ