MEET THE MURDERERS NEXT DOOR
IN THIS TRUE-CRIME miniseries, Olivia Colman and David Thewlis play Susan and Chris Edwards, who were convicted of murdering her parents and burying them in a back garden, even as the couple insisted the circumstances were far more complex. Their lives before and after the crime are depicted as largely sad and unremarkable, which is why Susan devotes so much of her inner life to the movies of Gary Cooper and other classic film stars, while Chris’ primary source of joy comes from being pen pals with French actor Gérard Depardieu. So Landscapers alternates between grim police procedural and CinemaScope fantasy. Susan envisions herself and Chris as Wild West outlaws, and director Will Sharpe and screenwriter Ed Sinclair periodically shatter the barrier between the plot and the production. We see
Colman and Thewlis moving around the Landscapers soundstage past members of the crew as the action shifts from an interrogation room to a version of the killings that’s being stage-managed by the cops. Colman and Thewlis are predictably great. But Landscapers, like Susan, seems far more invested in depicting her imaginary world than her real one, letting the actual story drag until Susan finds another mental escape.