354 SEPTEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
“Here they come. Here comes help,” whispers
the former foster mother of 18-year-old Marie
(Kaitlyn Dever). Marie sits in shock, having just been raped
by a masked intruder. But the detectives—all male, mostly baby
boomers—who take on her case are not, in fact, purely
a force for good. They focus, cruelly and inhumanely, on minor
inconsistencies in her story and heed protocol over humanity.
Yet somehow, the enduring emotion of Unbelievable (Netflix)—
written with unprecedented empathy by married literary duo
Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon,
showrunner Susannah Grant, and others—is
hope. When the openhearted detective Karen
Duvall (a dulcet, brilliant Merritt Wever) and
hard-edged Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette,
with grit and guts) are partnered to track
a serial rapist—a story line that eventually
collides with Marie’s—this show flips the
conventional procedural on its head, underlining just how often
those detective-duo shows have an explicitly male perspective.
Unbelievable is a story of assiduous hard work, of a mission to
find the perpetrator and the problems with the system.
On the other side of the criminal justice system, and in an
entirely different tenor, Back to Life (Showtime), a hilarious half-
hour dramedy from the BBC, is making its American debut.
The show follows Miri Matteson (Daisy Haggard, also the creator)
as she returns, after 18 years in prison, to her parents’ seaside
village, a place that—as some expletive-laden graffiti implies—
does not exactly welcome her back with open arms. But Miri and
her family remain upbeat through it all, her father (a perfectly
bewildered Richard Durden) taking selfies as they pick her up from
the penitentiary, her mother (the exquisitely dry Geraldine James)
hiding the knives (just in case). The show has a knack for finding
levity in Miri’s sudden arrival in the present (Prince is dead? So
is Bowie?), and its tragicomic tone puts it on a par with Fleabag.
(The two shows share producers.) Back to Life is a parade of droll
one-liners accompanying a suspenseful tale and a mesmerizing
look at how our lives slip away from all of us.—hillary k e l ly
Law and Disorder
A gritty procedural and a dark comedy
offer different perspectives on crime
and punishment.
TELEVISION
IN PURSUIT
KAITLYN DEVER
(ABOVE) AS MARIE
IN NETFLIX’S
UNBELIEVABLE, A
GRIPPING CRIME
DRAMA BASED ON
A TRUE STORY.
BEHIND THE LOOK
Strong Suit
One of the first to step
out in a piece from Chanel’s
Resort show—Virginie
Viard’s debut collection for
the maison—was Margot
Robbie. The screen siren
donned a powdered sugar–
white skirt-and-jacket
set of a nubby bouclé, but
in lieu of the flirty, floral
paillette-embellished top
the look was originally
shown with, Robbie opted
for a plain black tank. Her
swap only underscored
Viard’s inspiration: Karl
Lagerfeld’s successor says
she channeled “the young
Gabrielle [Chanel] wearing
men’s clothing for a party.”
It’s black, white—and
chic all over. —LILAH RAMZI
SHOW GIRLS
VIARD PAID HOMAGE
TO THE CAMELLIA WITH
GLOSSY 3-D FLORALS.
VLIFE
ROBBIE: NEIL WARNER/MEGA/NEWSCOM. CHANEL: COURTESY OF © CHANEL. RUNWAY: BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/GETTY IMAGES. FLOWERS: VICTOR VIRGILE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES. TV: BETH DUBBER/NETFLIX.
