Based on a 2021 novel by Catherine Ryan Howard, \u201c56 Days,\u201d premiering Wednesday on Prime Video, is billed as an \u201cerotic thriller,\u201d which means that every so often, or at least until the main characters are too distracted by the thriller part, the action will stop for a sex scene in a car, an alleyway or even a bed; these are relatively succinct, and more suggestive than explicit, with only a little bit of nudity. Sorry, if that\u2019s what you were hoping for.<\/p>\n
We open in the present, where we meet a decomposed body in a fancy bathtub, before fast rewinding to \u201cDay 1,\u201d when Oliver (Avan Jogia) and Ciara (Dove Cameron) meet in a grocery store. We feel from the beginning that this is not accidental, but just who\u2019s arranging it is not clear. They engage in strained banter that for all I know mirrors the way their generation talks when flirting over cucumbers but also sounds like bad writing, and plays as bad acting \u2014 but might be meant, after all, to signal that something is a little off. Soon enough we\u2019ll learn that neither is who they say they are, and that Oliver, at least, is hiding from a dark past, although hiding in pretty much plain sight.<\/p>\n
They are modeled as attractive opposites. He works at an architectural firm, not as an architect. She tells him she works in IT. He lives in a company-owned apartment full of dark, polished surfaces and bad modern art; she lives in a rundown apartment furnished with termites. He has a sleep disorder, which he tries to tame with yoga, meditation and prescription drugs. She has a Future Farmers of America sweatshirt. He is bearded and buff; she is a porcelain doll with Wednesday Addams<\/a> hair and skin. She\u2019s the cooler customer; he runs hot. He can be paranoid, but she snoops around a lot. He smells of money, and she has a family whose house is about to be repossessed. They do agree that kombucha tastes bad and is too expensive, and seem to share an interest in space travel, though we also see that she\u2019s done some cramming on the subject.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the scenes labeled \u201cToday,\u201d detectives Lee (Karla Souza) and Karl (Dorian Missick) are investigating the body in the tub \u2014 so decomposed by whatever it is the killer put in the water that it cannot quickly be identified as male or female, but we know from cross-cutting that the bathtub is in Oliver\u2019s apartment.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing new about a story that runs on dual timelines, in which the past eventually catches up with the present, though \u201c56 Days,\u201d developed by Lisa Zwerling (\u201cER\u201d) and Karyn Usher (\u201cPrison Break\u201d<\/a>), leans into it hard, with titles representing whatever day we\u2019ve come to. It\u2019s not a bad conceit \u2014 the viewer plays detective in the past-set scenes, and the detectives sort through the mess the earlier scenes have left behind, (I haven\u2019t read the book, but I can tell from the blurbs and Goodreads reviews that the plot of the series differs substantially from the novel, and contains a lot of additional business; like many such shows in the eight-hour streaming ecosystem, it is somewhat overstuffed.)<\/p>\n Past and present form essentially two discrete stories, different in tone, dialogue, camerawork and acting styles; they might belong to two entirely different series. Some secondary characters from the past-set scenes spill into the present \u2014 also in the mix are a psychiatrist (Patch Darragh) for Oliver, whom we are to regard as potentially unstable, a freelance journalist (Kira Guloien), who Really Needs That Story, a sister (Megan Peta Hill) for Ciara, who smokes and has unkempt hair, and Oliver\u2019s nice boss (Alfredo Narciso), who knows his secrets. But Oliver and Ciara never meet Lee and Karl.<\/p>\n I am guessing that \u201cerotic\u201d will draw more eyes than \u201cthriller\u201d \u2014 thrillers are a dime novel a dozen nowadays, and more often than not are described as \u201cgritty,\u201d which, decomposed body aside, this is not, and even that is more gooey than gritty. The camera takes time to adore the young protagonists, to admire their excellent surfaces, to look them straight in their moody, broody, serious eyes. Still, this aspect of \u201c56 Days\u201d can run to silliness \u2014 as is often the case when \u201cerotic\u201d enters the equation, leading to a line like, \u201cWe can drink our drink and pretend to be interested in whatever it is we\u2019re talking about, but we aren\u2019t really going to be listening are we?\u201d One scene, involving giant fans, re-creates Leo and Kate on the prow of the Titanic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a bad show at all, but what kept it afloat for me were the detectives as they walked through the familiar business of combing through crime scenes, \u201cDragnet\u201d-dry and droll, proposing theories (many of which we know are wrong) and interviewing persons of interest. (\u201cCan you just call for a warrant so we can go eat?\u201d is the sort of thing they get to say.) Each has been given extraneous dramatic business, perhaps to balance the scales with Oliver and Ciara, and to underscore that this is a show about two sets of couples, their trust issues and their need for one another. Or perhaps to fill time. But the actors handle it handily. <\/p>\n With her hair tied back in a practical bun, Souza (\u201cHome Economics,\u201d \u201cHow to Get Away With Murder\u201d) is especially good, doing a lot by doing a little, real in a way that not every character here gets to be, and Missick partners her perfectly. Not for the first time in my TV watching career did I wish that detectives from a limited series might be transferred<\/a> into a show of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based on a 2021 novel by Catherine Ryan Howard, \u201c56 Days,\u201d premiering Wednesday on Prime Video, is billed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[86491,2789,79242,217,6873,86490,48,52,51,21437,47,50,49,1741,24261,86489,24825,15060,2489,3044,315],"class_list":["post-182911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bad-show","tag-body","tag-ciara","tag-day","tag-detective","tag-erotic-thriller","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lee","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lot","tag-novel","tag-oliver","tag-present","tag-review","tag-scene","tag-story","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}