“The Whispers”:
Children have a creepy pretend friend in a new ABC thriller.
Cute kids can be quite the little troublemakers, can’t they? Especially in film and TV. From “The Bad Seed” to “The Omen” to “The Shining,” the little dears can become little devils in a flash.
Some of the kids in ABC’s new thriller “The Whispers” have an imaginary friend. That’s not so unusual, of course, but in this case, the kids in suburban Washington, D. C., share the same imaginary friend, who entices them into playing a mysterious game. Winning or losing the game may involve life or death. It’s the job of Special Agent Claire
Bennigan to get to the bottom of what turns out to be far more serious, and gripping, than mere child’s play.
The series, created by Soo Hugh and premiering Monday, has all the right pieces working together to make a decent show. It becomes slightly over- plotted by the third episode, but nothing that significantly diminishes its power to hold our interest.
Claire ( Lily Rabe) brings a lot of insight to her job as a child specialist for the FBI, but she also brings a lot of baggage as well. She took a leave of absence from the agency when her personal life imploded. She was having an affair with a married man, Defense Department operative Wes Lawrence ( Barry Sloane), and it was ruining her marriage to an Air Force officer whose plane later went missing, leaving him presumed dead.
When a young mother is injured falling out of a child’s tree house, Bennigan is called back to work to coax the woman’s young daughter, Harper ( Abby Ryder Fortson), into talking about the accident. Claire is paired with Agent Jessup Rollins ( Derek Webster), who questions both her judgment and whether she’s stable enough to return to work, especially after Claire’s investigation suggests the possibility of something far bigger and more sinister than a suburban mom falling from a tree.
Bit by bit, strange details about the woman’s accident emerge and are linked to other incidents involving children. At the same time, just as Claire was beginning to move on from her marriage-ending affair and her husband’s death, her cases drag her back into the mess all over again. Meanwhile, the local hospital gets a battered patient who can’t remember his name, but John Doe ( Milo Ventimiglia) may be the link between the various elements of the complicated mystery.
Rabe, a stage actress of considerable acclaim, has done TV before, recurring roles in “American Horror Story” and on “The Good Wife,” but gets to carry a show for the first time with “The Whispers.” She’s more than equal to the challenge. Claire is complicated and flawed, not quite a Carrie Mathison but a modern woman challenged by trying to maintain her personal life with the kind of sense of order and priority she brings to her job. As written, the character may not be all that inspired, but Rabe gives her dimension.
She communicates in sign language with convincing emotional truth with her young son, Henry ( Kyle Harrison Breitkopf ), who is deaf. When the investigation necessitates communicating again with Wes, we readily see and feel the pain she has to put aside in order to find out what really happened to her husband and how that may or may not connect to what’s going on with the children and their invisible friend.
All of the actors are good, but special mention must be made of the kids. Some are impossibly young, yet we believe them every minute, even when they are communicating with their unseen and unheard friend. It is to the credit of the writers and directors that the innocence we would expect in kids this young is carefully maintained, which only makes the central motif of the series that much more unsettling. In addition to Breitkopf and Fortson, we meet Minx, played by Kylie Rogers. All three young actors manage to be both convincing as real kids, but also maintaining regular chats with their invisible friend, Drill.
The children are adorable in “The Whispers” and get into all kinds of mischief. Some of it deadly serious. Some of it just plain deadly.