Why I’m Really Into AMC’s ‘The Killing’ Right Now

Image credit: AMC

Normally, when I hear about a TV show or movie that features a woman in peril who winds up dead, I tend not to be all that interested. (The drama Medium was one exception to that rule because I was a huge fan of the depiction of the central DuBois family.) When I saw the promos for AMC’s new drama The Killing which asked, “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” I didn’t lift a finger to set my DVR.

But then I read all of these reviews. Glowing reviews. Heard people raving. Read praise on Twitter feeds. So I decided to take a peek at the pilot.

And the pilot was all it took. I was hooked on this dark, intellectually stimulating conundrum of a mystery that contains layer upon layer of intricacy and intrigue. I wanted more.

It stars the awesomely understated Mireille Enos who you might remember as twins JoDean and Kathy Marquart from Big Love. She plays Sarah Linden, a homicide detective whose last day of work was the day when 17-year-old Rosie Larsen went missing and was later found dead, bound in the trunk of a car that had been plunged into lake. She was supposed to move to Sonoma with her fiancé and bring along her grade school aged son.

But Linden couldn’t bring herself to leave Seattle, the pull of the Larsen case was too strong.

Complicating factors: Larsen was found in a car that belonged to the mayoral campaign of Seattle City Councilor Darren Richmond, played by Billy Campbell whom I loved when he was a downtrodden divorced dad in Once and Again. It’s not clear right now whether Richmond, whose wife was killed in a violent crime years ago, was involved in the case or whether someone from the campaign had something to do with it.

Michelle Forbes, who has appeared in In Treatment and Homicide: Life on the Street, is heart-rending as Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s mother who’s collapsing, disintegrating is a shadow of her former self, whose grief is currently blinding her to the needs of her two young sons.

If you like a Rubik’s Cube of a TV show that doesn’t talk down to you and whose cast is low-keyed but intense, I highly recommend you take a chance on The Killing.

Want to see what the fuss is about? AMC is streaming episodes online for a limited time.
Image credit: Carole Segal/AMC.