THE SINNER
CAST Bill Pullman, Matt Bomer, Chris Messina, Jessica Hecht
THROUGHOUT ITS PREVIOUS two seasons, The Sinner has combined addictively binge-friendly storytelling, slick visuals and a disconcertingly askew set of characters and situations. Season three, which arrives in full on Netflix after it aired on the USA Network in the US and on itunes, seems initially to be a different, less peculiar iteration of the formula. Where series one’s central mystery was why a woman suddenly went crazy and stabbed a stranger to death with an apple-slicer in broad daylight on a public beach, and series two focused on a young boy who poisoned his own parents, the premise of season three is less eye-catchingly weird. In the small upstate New York town of Dorchester, we meet Jamie, a handsome, charismatic high-school teacher (Bomer) whose apparent domestic idyll with his pregnant wife (Hecht) is interrupted by an unannounced visit from Jamie’s old college buddy Nick (Messina). Minutes later they’re involved in a car crash together. Nick dies, but Jamie survives and The Sinner’s recurring detective Harry Ambrose (Pullman) launches a routine investigation. That his inquiries prove not-so routine is hardly a surprise, and despite some chilling hallucinations from Jamie in his PTSD state, the mystery feels oddly tame by The Sinner’s standards. Where, for example, is the underlying religious satire of the first two series? And yet, don’t give up on season three too quickly, because Pullman provides even more quirkiness in his endlessly intriguing performance than he did previously, and soon the complexities of the car crash prove to be pleasingly bizarre. We’re still fascinated by The Sinner after all. BH