Paul Walter Hauser is best known for his supporting roles in the box office successes I, Tonya—where he met his now-BFF Sebastian Stan—Cruella, and BlacKkKlansman. He also played the title character in Richard Jewell. From a parasocial standpoint, the actor radiates humbleness and kindness, yet has the talent to bring to life the most absurd, and sometimes demented, characters. He achieves that expertly in the upcoming Apple TV+ series Black Bird, where he acts alongside a star-studded cast including Taron Egerton and Ray Liotta.
While Hauser's career-defining performance as the bone-chilling, mind-boggling suspected serial killer Larry Hall deserves a lot of credit for making this show so good, a huge amount of praise is earned by the show's entire cast and creative team. Lately, many true crime television series have gotten the same feedback: the genre is oversaturated and few can offer something that's subversive enough to be a standout. Well, Black Bird is different. The show is brilliantly paced, well written, and balances blush-worthy sincerity with a level of creepiness that'll leave its viewers gagging.
Based on the novel In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption” by James Keene and Hillel Levin—which ironically was reviewed back in 2014 as "a real life episode resembling a TV show"—Black Bird follows high school football hero and policeman’s son Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) and his sentencing of 10 years in a minimum security prison due to drug trafficking charges.
Jimmy is cocky and dismissive. He works his charm to get whatever ladies he wants, and he grins at the agents as he is beaten at his own game, arrested, and carted away to prison. It is in prison that he is given a life-altering choice: transfer to a maximum-security prison and get into the mind of Larry Hall to get an early release or serve his full sentence with no opportunity for parole. The young adult quickly dismisses the opportunity and is ready to team up with some great lawyers, pull the "daddy card," and skirt his way through his sentencing. However, for reasons that will have to remain spoiler-free, Jimmy decides to take the bargain. But is it a good deal?
Jimmy is told that the deal goes down the toilet if he can't get Larry to tell him where he buried the young girls he is suspected of raping and killing, and Larry is a smart man who has used his supposed-childlike innocence to win over the courts and maintain the trust of his family. By description, this may sound like a show that follows a predictable and uninspiring tale, but it is anything but that. Hauser puts on an eerie yet inexplicably trusting performance that'll have viewers questions his guilt/innocence, and Egerton plays a man who is so lost within himself that he cannot see how much he is personally hurting, and hurting those around him.
Showrunner Dennis Lehane comes to the project with a unique resume, as both a filmmaker and a novelist. His book, Shutter Island, was adapted into a movie starring Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo Dicaprio in 2010, a production which he served as an executive producer for, and he worked as a writer on both The Wire and The Outsider. Credited as both an executive producer and a writer, Lehane executed the perfect pace for Black Bird.
The series starts off slow, but not slow enough that viewers won't want to return for the next episode, and it builds momentum all the way through with calculated, but not predicable, dips and moments of relief. Most notably, the show stays in the present and chooses to sparingly use flashback sequences to move the story forward, not backwards—a technique that has been long-abused in television and often results in lazy scriptwriting. And regarding the format, Apple TV's decision to drop two episodes at once before switching to weekly air dates will benefit this series as the ending of each episode will leave its audience with a tilted head and a furrowed brow.
Apple TV+ has been rolling out back-to-back bangers with Ted Lasso and Severance topping the chart, and this show is a worthy addition. Black Bird should be charmless given its dark and unimaginable material, but manages to be mesmerizing as it dives into the vulnerable psyche of Jimmy while breaking down a troubled man's past.
Black Bird premieres July 8 with the first two episodes on Apple TV+.