A KILLER PLAYING WITH TIME
When astrophysicist Jin-Sook asks if the serial killer at the heart of this thriller miniseries is going to kill her, newspaper archivist Kirby answers, “He already has. Just not yet.” Confused? That’s kind of the point of this riveting reinvention of a creaky genre, which adds two crucial new elements: time travel and Elisabeth Moss. The twisty plot follows Moss’ Kirby in the mid-Nineties as she and reporter Dan (Wagner Moura) look into decades-old murders similar to the attack she barely survived, all of which turn out to be the work of Harper ( Jamie Bell), who looks the same in every era because he has access to a time machine. There are moments when Shining Girls, adapted by Silka Luisa from the novel by Lauren Beukes, lets our knowledge
of Harper’s powers get a bit too far ahead of Dan and Kirby’s investigation, and others where it’s hard to follow the plot, even when you know what the bad guy can do. More often than not, though, the confounding nature of the story only serves to put the viewer inside Kirby’s head, and the great Moss and veteran Breaking Bad director Michelle MacLaren do the rest of the heavy lifting, giving this fantastical story a gripping heart.