Innovation is the ability to be able to see what’s over the next hill.
No one ever accused the broadcast networks of possessing this ability. Rather they latch onto a franchise like Marvel, Shonda Rhimes, “CSI” or “Law & Order,” and strip mine it.
In a sense that’s what ABC has done with John Ridley.The Mequon native had already received his Oscar nomination for his “12 Years a Slave Screenplay” when it hopped on the Ridley bandwagon and ordered “American Crime.”
While there is no way they could have foreseen last summer’s racial strife – or know that the series would premiere 6he day after the Justice Department’s Ferguson report – Ridley’s racial antenna is finely tuned.
Race runs through his previous works in print and film and his early television experience included “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Barbershop” and “Third Watch.”
“American Crime” presents a searing and absorbing panoply of race and class in the American jigsaw puzzle. In the aftermath of their son’s murder two divorced parents – beautifully played by a stunned Timothy Hutton and an angry Felicity Huffman – are drawn into the web of their child’s life as they learn more about him than they did when he was alive.
All the characters in one room
A single father, an Hispanic auto mechanic, learns tough love is not enough when his son gets involved with gang members. An interracial pair of meth addicts and a small time hood round out the characters around whom events swirl.
All that’s missing is a Muslim character but that the couple’s son was a military vet perhaps a Middle Eastern angle will emerge.
Ridley, who wrote and directed the Hendrix biopic “Jimi: All Is By My Side,” wrote and directed this pilot episode – tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC affiliate WISN-TV (Channel 12) and the result is filled with flashbacks, details and cinematic flourishes, such as; a tough talking youth is still wearing braces; the way music (the score is by Mark Isham) is used to enhance tension and sound to simulate the white noise of grief; and the shopping mall parking lot arrest of a suspect being silently watched through a shopkeeper’s window.
“American Crime” uses the limited run “miniseries” format created on cable, which allows storytelling that is expansive but finite. And as more and more film artists turn to TV ABC gets in Ridley someone who not only knows how to get over the next hill, but takes us all of us with him as he climbs it.
Tags: ABC, American Crime, John Ridley Posted by