My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Is American Crime the best series on network TV?

Through the first 3 episodes of John Ridley's American Crime (Season 3) I'm once again impressed by everything about this series. I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me the best serious crime drama on network TV - on a scale with the smartest HBO, SHO, Amazon, and Netflix dramas. Each of the three seasons is a completely stand-alone miniseries, but many members of the cast appear in two or even all 3 of the seasons, in entirely different roles. So watching characters, notably Felicity Huffman, play 3 different parts to perfection is one of the incidental pleasures of this series. But even more so, the whole crew does a fine job with an intelligent and complex drama about a crime and its rippling and lingering effect on so many people - victims, families, entire communities. Season 3 is about the treatment of migrant laborers on a NC family-owned farm; the crew that subcontracts and manages the labor is corrupt and vicious, and because of neglect 15 laborers die in a fire in a one of the trailers into which they're crammed. (One serious quibble: This would have been a major news story, not something that would slide under the radar.) The owners of the farm wash their hands of responsibility - they're not the ones running the labor operation, they say - but Huffman, the wife of one of the 3 siblings who own the farm, begins to question this hands-off attitude and to push her very reluctant husband to look further into the cause of the fire. A hallmark of this series through all 3 seasons is the intelligent and daring use of close-ups; many of the finest dramatic moments focus full-screen on the fact of one of the characters, in either monologue or dialogue, which really shows the expressive characters of the actors and showcases some truly fine screenwriting as well. Another great strength of each of the seasons is the honest and sometimes daring portrayal of important and complex social issues. In episode 3, Huffman and spouse go to a community meeting on migrant labor, and the words of the speaker hit them, and us, pretty hard: there's a price to pay for the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and most of us are unwilling to take a close look at that price. American Crime is taking that close look, and it's pretty harrowing.

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