SHINING GIRLS
Peep In Time
UK/US Apple TV+, Fridays Showrunner Silka Luisa
Cast Elisabeth Moss, Wagner Moura,
Jamie Bell, Phillipa Soo
Anyone jonesing for the return of The Handmaid’s Tale could probably fend off the shakes with this one-off series, which foregrounds Elisabeth Moss as another determined young woman overcoming misogyny. This time it’s embodied in an individual, one who ticks the “superficial charm” box on the psychopath checklist, and whose tells include mansplaining, unsolicited beauty advice and inappropriate touching.
Based on Lauren Beukes’s 2013 novel (the title refers to young women bursting with potential), it centres on Moss’s Kirby Maxrachi (not her real name), an archive clerk at the Chicago Sun-times in 1992. As the survivor of a brutal assault by an unknown assailant, Kirby realises – when a woman’s body is found in an old tunnel – that she narrowly escaped a serial killer. One with a difference, as Jamie Bell’s Harper Curtis is able, via mysterious means, to somehow travel backwards and forwards in time to carry out his crimes.
It’s a brilliantly simple concept, chilling in the execution: how much worse would it be if a stalker could insinuate himself throughout your timeline, from childhood to the present day? Able to stand exactly where he knows, from observation, that he’ll remain unnoticed, Harper practically becomes Kirby’s shadow. And there’s a fiendish ingenuity to the way he toys with his future victims. As he plays the sounds of their own death to them, it’s like a sci-fi version of Michael Powell classic Peeping Tom.
Moss is exceptional in the leading role, investing Kirby with both vulnerability and damage and steely determination. As she teams up with alcoholic reporter Dan Velazquez (Wagner Moura), what follows is an absorbing spin on the classic investigative template, one with some fascinating wrinkles.
For starters, Kirby’s world keeps changing around her, requiring her to keep notes of what her job is, what her pet is and so on. She can return home to find she doesn’t live there any more, or that a co-worker is now her husband. Kirby is always a fan of Godzilla, though – how could you not like this woman?
Quite why her notes (or memories) aren’t rewritten is just one of several puzzling aspects. The changes to Kirby’s world seem to be random, rather than a matter of cause and effect. And when you think about it, how could anyone escape from a serial killer who has the option to go back in time to finish the job, as many times as is required? This is a question that’s underlined once we’ve seen the resolution. But we can suspend disbelief. This kind of thing is in the nature of time travel stories. Simply blame the Butterfly Effect, or assume that Harper enjoys a challenge, as long the odds are still stacked in his favour.
It’s almost a shame that Shining Girls is just a limited series… But actually, here’s hoping they don’t make any more, because this is a thoroughly satisfying, perfectly self-contained piece of work which never sags or threatens to outstay its welcome, one that ends triumphantly in more senses than one.
In the TV series, Harper gives the young Kirby a blue wooden Pegasus. In the novel, it’s an orange plastic horse.
A thoroughly satisfying, perfectly selfcontained piece of work