Long Bright River, Amanda Seyfried plays a cop with secrets

Long Bright River tells a grim and dark tale starring Amanda Seyfried as a Philadelphia cop who is invested in her community. There are police procedural aspects to the story, but it’s essentially a psychological exploration of one family’s secrets and lies.

Long Bright River starts with Mickey (Amanda Seyfried), who is a beat cop not a detective, showing her new partner Eddie (Dash Mihok) the tent city where many addicts and downtrodden people live. Mickey knows the names of every woman doing sex work on the street. She went to school with many of them. One of them is her sister.

Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) plays the sister. She’s been addicted to various substances since her early teens. Mickey, who is just a few years older, had to serve as mother and sister. Their mother died of an overdose when the girls were young. Their father is dead. They were raised by their grandfather, Gee (John Doman).

Mickey has a genius son, Thomas (Callum Vinson), who is about to turn eight. Simon (Matthew Del Negro) as Thomas’ dad is more hindrance than help in raising him.

Callum Vinson did a brilliant job in this part. He overflows with talent. What an outstanding young actor!

Mickey loves to teach Thomas about music. She is a musician at heart. She plays the English horn, a plaintive, melancholy instrument that suits her melancholy personality. Mickey is a better musician than cop. She’s physically intimidated easily, she’s not tough. But she’s persistent and determined after a series of young female addicts are murdered and her sister Kacey disappears.

As I mentioned, Mickey is not a detective. But she inserts herself into the investigation of the murdered women because she’s terrified that Kacey will turn up as another one of them. She does all this against protocol and without the support of her boss.

Truman (Nicholas Pinnock) was Mickey’s partner for years. He’s on leave now due to an injury. But he steps up to help her investigate the murders, something he should not be doing while on leave.

There are eight episodes. The pace was often slow. The episodes are filled with many wrong turns in the hunt for the killer and many deeply held secrets that Mickey reveals slowly as she searches for Kacey. There’s a lot of complaining from the people around Mickey because she doesn’t talk and doesn’t tell the truth. Her secrets drag her down. The people she’s involved with have to pull them out of her almost by force. Lots of flashbacks are used to help explain her past. When the family secrets are finally revealed they are huge!

While Mickey chases around all over Philadelphia at crazy hours, she leaves Thomas with a babysitter, with Gee, or with her wonderful landlord downstairs, Mrs. Mahon (Harriet Sansom Harris).

This series often gets compared to Mare of Easttown. Women cops with dark secrets tie them together. Long Bright River isn’t as good as Mare of Easttown, but few things are. I thought Amanda Seyfried did a beautiful job with her introverted, withdrawn, slightly depressed character.

I like the behind the scenes credentials on Long Bright River. It’s based on a book by Liz Moore, who also created the series for television. Every episode was directed by a woman: Hagar Ben-Asher, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Mona Fastvold, Meera Menon, Nikki Toscano, and Jessica Yu.

You can see this one streaming on Peacock. All the episodes are available now. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you watch it. The comments are open.