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Under the Bridge ★★★★ Disney+ It’s a sad truth that terrible real-life crimes can make for mundane television drama. Sometimes those grim autopsies and anguished interrogations serve as nothing more than tropes to be ticked off. One of the strengths of this impressive American true crime drama is that it recognises those limits and surpasses them.

Made with both harsh necessity and genuine insight, Under the Bridge is idiosyncratic, even untoward at times. But the care with which it treats all of the central characters, regardless of their actions, prevails. A scene from the true-crime drama Under The Bridge.



Credit: Disney+ The crime is incomprehensible, a dilemma which echoes across this limited series: on a cold November night in the Canadian town of Saanich, 14-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) is found dead after going out with the group of local girls she craved to be accepted by. The circumstances are bleak from the start, as is the casual cruelty of Reena’s sometimes friends, led by the gangster-obsessed Jo Bell (Chloe Guidry). The “who” question unfolds over the initial episodes, but underpinned by first-rate performances, the show is as much about the limits of finding out why.

Under the Bridge was adapted from writer Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 non-fiction book of the same name about the case. Filmmaker Quinn Shephard and Godfrey, who passed away just before production commenced, carefully sketch intersecting concerns. Reena is desperate to escape bo.

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