What to Watch

There’s hardly a shortage of police procedurals out there in the ether this century. There are nights when the freeto-airs and various broadcast platforms yours truly begrudgingly subscribes to seem to be full of little else.

And, in a field of often extraordinarily competent offerings, it is a rare treat to find one that, even in this most overdone of genres, still stands an easy head and shoulders above the rest.

If you haven’t seen Netflix’s Unbelievable, you pretty much must. At least, you should if you’re a fan of blisteringly smart writing, direction, performance and general kaupapa.

Unbelievable is based (gratifyingly closely) on the true story of a young woman called Marie. In early 2008, Marie called her local Seattle police to report that she had been raped in her own apartment by a masked stranger. After a couple of interviews, during which the police seized on a couple of small inconsistencies in Marie’s story, she agreed to withdraw the complaint and said she had invented the story. The police, very unusually in such cases, brought charges against Marie for false reporting.

Meanwhile, in Denver, a serial rapist seems to be at large. His methods are distressingly similar to the attack Marie alleged, but with US state police forces being run as virtual fiefdoms, with little sharing of information or resources, no connection is drawn. What makes the cases profoundly different and eventually leads to justice being done, is the quality of the police’s work in the two jurisdictions. In Seattle, Marie was treated as a liability from the moment any skerrick of doubt could be cast on her story or character. But in Denver, the lead detectives were women, whose professionalism and understanding of how devastating the attacks were, led to an investigation that set a benchmark of how to properly pursue a serial rapist, and of how to treat the people who report the attacks.

Unbelievable is landmark television. Though occasionally distressing, it never dwells on or exploits the victim’s experiences. The horrors of Unbelievable are never minimised, but they are handled so deftly it makes nearly every other TV depiction of rape look exploitative and prurient.

Even the critically acclaimed Broadchurch and Happy Valley seem ham-fisted by comparison to what the Unbelievable writing and directing team achieve.

Unbelievable was created and co-written by Susannah Grant, who also wrote Erin Brockovich. Toni Collette, Merritt Wever (Godless) and Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart) are terrifically good in the lead roles in an engrossing, perfectly puttogether series. Despite the story it tells, it stays watchable, with an almost unbearably moving, cathartic final episode. Very recommended.