Shining Girls

The serial killer thriller has always been a sketchy genre, hovering in the disreputable margin between murder mystery and horror. Real-life serial killers ...

This makes for a serviceable supernatural thriller, but this reader, for one, can’t help mourning the loss of all those shining girls. In every version of her life, Kirby keeps a notebook filled with the basic information about herself that she needs to function, but the unpredictable shifts leave her backfooted much of the time. The Shining Girls is that rare serial killer thriller in which the victims out-glow the killer, but none of these rich stories makes it into the miniseries. The mini-portraits Beukes creates of these women really do shine, each character a person as interesting and three-dimensional as Harper is banal and flattened. Kirby, the novel’s heroine, becomes one of Harper’s victims in 1989, but she survives the attack and thereafter devotes her life to hunting him down. Lauren Beukes’ 2013 novel The Shining Girls found an ingenious solution to this conundrum, even if that solution doesn’t figure in the high-concept pitch for the book or the new miniseries based on it: a time-traveling serial killer.

There have been so many serial killer thrillers on television that writers are running of ways to keep the genre fresh. Enter “Shining Girls,” a new Apple ...

I just worry that with the incredibly crowded state of the medium, people may not have the patience for a show that starts as slowly as this one. And I have to say that everything about the show gains momentum at the end of episode four, which features one of the best closing scenes of the year. If there’s a problem with “Shining Girls,” and it’s kind of a big problem, this is yet another one of those projects that I wish was made a decade ago as a feature film. Harper is the kind of serial killer who doesn’t hide in the shadows—he openly stalks his victims with a confidence that borders on Christian Bale in “ American Psycho.” There’s something in his choice of accent and almost charming delivery that’s chilling. “Shining Girls” is a thematic treasure trove in how it unpacks the reality-shifted impact of trauma and Moss is more than up to the challenge of a tough role like this one. And what about the matchbook found in Kirby from a place that doesn’t exist ... yet.

Or simple terrorisers of women. But I would urge, even if that is your current position, to give Shining Girls (Apple TV+) a try, though the premise may be ...

One constant is that she is always a newspaper archivist with the Sun Times (her story, which is more central than in the book, is set in early 90s Chicago), the closest she could manage to her ambition of becoming a reporter in the wake of the life-changing assault. Sometimes the alterations are small and a pet cat is now a pet dog, or she returns to a different desk at work; sometimes they are large and she finds her hot mess of a mother reborn in a more literal sense than usual as an evangelical Christian, or that Kirby herself is now married to a man called Marcus instead of still isolated and single. But I would urge, even if that is your current position, to give Shining Girls (Apple TV+) a try, though the premise may be unalluring.

Wagner Moura, Phillipa Soo, Amy Brenneman and Jamie Bell also star in this adaptation of Lauren Beukes' novel.

Her mom is nowhere to be found, and Grendel is back to being a cat. But now her co-worker Marcus (Chris Chalk) lives with her and is her boyfriend. But with a fine lead performance by Moss and expert direction, it’s still got enough tension to make us OK with getting only little bits of info. Sleeper Star: Always good to see Amy Brenneman, and here she plays a rock-and-roll mom who seems to be casual and overbearing all at once. Usually, just getting crumbs would be frustrating for us, but we’re along for the ride with Kirby as she tries to figure out just what the hell is going on. And the idea that these facets of the story will get revealed over the season is an intriguing one. But the changes get to be more rapid and severe, like her apartment changing floors and her mother appearing and disappearing, and we’re wondering if these mental issues stem from something other than the attack. She encounters Dan, who got the same lead, and he’s intrigued when she tells him about her attack. It’s to the point where Kirby wants to move to Orlando and forget. Parting Shot: Kirby finds that her apartment is now on the third floor instead of the second. Flash to 1992, still in Chicago. Kirby Mazrachi (Elisabeth Moss) is in her apartment, writing observations and petting her cat Grendel. Her mother Rachel (Amy Brenneman) has just returned from her club gig. Her characters are often troubled, often in some sort of danger, and most of the time they’re both.

As he returns to television, the Narcos star picks apart his new role in Apple TV Plus' metaphysical thriller.

But for Dan, it’s because of the alcohol. In a way, that was a fun scene to play, because Dan is clearly in deep pain but is having fun. I reached out to them to talk about the differences between what it’s like to work in the field now versus in the ’90s. It’s obviously very different. Here’s a guy who had his own column, and he wants to regain that. WM: It’s always hard to play drunk. He wants justice for her, to help catch Harper and stop him from killing more women. I was proud to be playing a good albeit troubled reporter. For Dan, the beginning bond with Kirby is about the story and bringing his professional life back. He was so generous with his time; he took me to the newsroom, which was extremely exciting and informative for me. I was so excited to be playing a journalist. The A.V. Club spoke to Moura about why journalism matters, the things that drew him to Shining Girls, and what, if anything, he can tease about where the show is headed. I also think this is a very important time to be portraying a good journalist on TV. Journalism is in such a weird position nowadays because of fake news.

If you can get past the first few plodding, confusing hours, entertainment awaits.

As much as I hated the first couple of hours of the show, I loved—in a creeped-out way—the rest. That's not a spoiler; he projects an air of malevolence so profound that you know he's damnably evil the first time he walks into the frame. (Yes, kids, there was a time—and Shining Girls is set in it—when everything in the world wasn't available at a click or two on a computer keyboard.) She forgets everything from the location of her newsroom desk to which floor of the building her apartment is on. But as she eyes stories written by just-short-of-washed-up crime reporter Dan Velazquez (Wagner Moura, Narcos) about the recent murder of a social worker, Mazrachi notices some similarities with her own assault. Shining Girls is an immensely entertaining show, if you have the time and patience to wait it out.

The star of Narcos and the Elite Squad films tells us about working with Elisabeth Moss on the new Apple TV+ mystery series.

It's the biggest excitement, I think, of this job, to play with your partner and when she gives you something, and you go, "Oh!" So we go into a different direction. When you approach the scenes, especially in my scenes with Lizzie, I love when you can read the scene in different ways. And this young, amazing actress called Cailee Spaeny. So it's the four of us in a car, trying to figure this Civil War out. First of all, one of the things that I was most proud of about the show was the fact that I was going to play a journalist, because this is my background. My favorite thing in the show is the relationship between Kirby and Dan, because I think that they're both very troubled characters and they recognize in each other similar wounds and they're both characters that are trying to get their lives back on track. So I think it's very well written, and I love the way that they approach each other in a very slow [way]. They don't open up to the other immediately, but slow. Most of my friends in Brazil are journalists, so I was talking to them especially about the difference between being a journalist nowadays and what was it to be a journalist back in the '90s, which is completely different. Despite whatever problems Dan might have, he is a guy who is always searching for the truth. It adds a lot of layers to the character. So I was basically coming back to all the — I was reading about journalism again. Whenever I speak with people who are making projects that center on journalism, it's only a matter of time until "All the President's Men" comes up, since that's the gold standard for the genre. That's what he does in "Shining Girls," the new Apple TV+ mystery show in which he plays Dan Valasquez, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who teams up with a women named Kirby (Elisabeth Moss) to track a serial killer who has crossed paths with Kirby before.

Wondering if the series Shining Girls starring Elizabeth Moss is available for subscribers to stream on Netflix? Don't worry, we've got you covered!

But unfortunately, Shining Girls isn’t available on Netflix, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change in the past, present, or future. Some excellent alternatives from the mystery genre ready to stream now include Who Killed Sara, Elite, Unsolved Mysteries and The Silent Sea, just to name a few. Along with Moss in this intriguing narrative experience is an outstanding cast consisting of talented players, including Wagner Moura, Jaimie Bell, Phillipa Soo, and Amy Brenneman.