| The Killing | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Serial crime drama |
| Developed by | Veena Sud |
| Starring | Mireille Enos Billy Campbell Joel Kinnaman Michelle Forbes Brent Sexton Kristin Lehman Eric Ladin Brendan Sexton III Jamie Anne Allman Annie Corley |
| Theme music composer | We Fell to Earth |
| Composer(s) | Frans Bak |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 13 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Veena Sud Mikkel Bondesen Søren Sveistrup Piv Bernth Ingolf Gabold |
| Producer(s) | Aaron Zelman Jeremy Doner Kristen Campo Dawn Prestwich Nicole Yorkin |
| Location(s) | Vancouver, British Columbia |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Fox Television Studios Fuse Entertainment |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | AMC |
| Original run | April 3, 2011 – present |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Forbrydelsen |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The Killing is an American crime drama television series based on the Danish television series with the same English title, but known as Forbrydelsen (The Crime) in Danish. The American version was developed by Veena Sud and produced by Fox Television Studios and Fuse Entertainment. The series' first season, consisting of 13 hour-long episodes, premiered on the cable channel AMC on April 3, 2011, with a two-hour premiere.[1] On June 13, 2011, AMC ordered a second season, that will contain 13 episodes,[2] set for a spring 2012 premiere.[3]
Contents |
Set in Seattle, Washington, the series follows the investigation into the murder of local teenager Rosie Larsen, with each episode covering approximately 24 hours. The first season covers the first two weeks of the investigation and has three main storylines: the police investigation into Rosie's murder, the attempts of her family to deal with their grief, and the fluctuating electoral fortunes of a political campaign that becomes embroiled in the case.
The main character is Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos), an experienced homicide detective who is about to retire at a young age to follow her fiancé (Callum Keith Rennie) to Sonoma, California. On her last day on the job, Linden is partnered with a rookie Homicide detective Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman), who has recently transferred from an undercover assignment in vice and narcotics. Holder's erratic and aggressive style contrasts with Linden's more reserved demeanor. The two are sent to investigate a possible crime scene in a local wilderness park where a bloody woman's shirt and a credit card belonging to Stan Larsen (Brent Sexton) have been discovered. The detectives talk to Larsen's wife Mitch (Michelle Forbes), who reveals that the family has just returned from a weekend camping trip and that their seventeen-year-old daughter Rosie had not gone with them. It soon turns out that no one seems to know where Rosie was, and her father Stan and the police frantically search for her. Eventually, a car belonging to the mayoral campaign of city councilman Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) is pulled from a lake in the park, and Rosie is discovered dead in the trunk.
As the Larsen family tries to cope with its grief, police suspicion initially focuses on Rosie's rich dissolute boyfriend Jasper and his drug dealing friend Kris, who had been at a party with Rosie the night she went missing. This suspicion only increases when a video surfaces of Jasper and Kris having sex with someone wearing Rosie's Halloween costume and blood is discovered in the room where the video was shot. However, one of Rosie's friends comes forward to admit that it was her on the tape.
The police next begin to suspect Rosie's English teacher Bennet Ahmed (Brandon Jay McLaren) after the police discover that he had secretly written her letters and that he had a history of inappropriate contact with female students, including one past student, who is now his wife. Police suspicion grows after it is discovered that Rosie had visited Bennet's house the night she disappeared and that Bennet had lied about the visit. The police interest in Bennet is leaked to the press, resulting in attacks on Bennet's mosque. The revelation also damages the Richmond campaign, as Bennet had worked as a volunteer at a community program sponsored by Richmond, and the candidate refuses to denounce him without proof of his guilt. After the police fail to obtain enough evidence to arrest Bennet, Mitch Larsen goads her husband, who had previously worked as an enforcer for a local criminal syndicate, into savagely beating Bennet, leaving the man in a coma. However, the police soon discover that Bennet was innocent when a friend who was at Bennet's house provides him with an alibi. On discovering Bennet's innocence, Stan Larsen turns himself in to the authorities.
Now without a prime suspect, the police discover that Rosie had been making trips to a Native American casino located on an unnamed island in Puget Sound, where she has been making regular deposits into a secret bank account that she had set up under the name of her aunt Terry (Jamie Anne Allman). Terry, it is discovered, had been working as a prostitute for a high-end escort service, something the police suspect Rosie may have been involved in as well. From Terry, the police learn of an intimidating client who had threatened to drown another prostitute. They soon discover that this client is Darren Richmond. Richmond had earlier been eliminated as a suspect because his campaign manager (Kristin Lehman), with whom he was romantically involved, had provided him with an alibi. However, after discovering that Richmond has been engaging in other romantic relationships, she tells the police that Richmond was gone for several hours the night Rosie was murdered. Later, Holder provides them with a photograph from a toll booth camera showing Richmond leaving the casino in the car in which Rosie was found. The police arrest Richmond, potentially destroying his campaign, while Linden boards a plane to Sonoma with her son. Richmond is shown in a perp walk outside the police station. Belko Royce (Brendan Sexton III), a family friend of the Larsens, and a suspect in the case, approaches Richmond and draws a gun.
The season one finale ends with a plot twist. As her plane readies for takeoff, Linden receives a phone call from the state police informing her that the toll booth cameras, from which Holder had supposedly gotten the incriminating photograph of Richmond, have been broken for months and that no footage is available; she therefore realizes that the photograph was falsified evidence and the case against Richmond is possibly compromised. Meanwhile, Holder meets with an unidentified person with whom he discusses his falsification of this evidence.
The pilot was ordered by AMC in January 2010, and then was picked up for a full series order in August 2010.[4][5] The series is filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and production began on the pilot episode on December 2, 2010.[6] The pilot is written by series creator and executive producer Veena Sud and is directed by Patty Jenkins.[5]
In contrast to the original Danish series, executive producer Veena Sud explained, "We're creating our own world. We are using the Danish series as a blueprint, but we are kind of diverging and creating our own world, our world of suspects and, potentially, ultimately who killed Rosie Larsen." Sud describes the series as "slow-burn storytelling in a sense that every moment that we don't have to prettify or gloss over or make something necessarily easy to digest, that we're able to go to all sorts of places that are honest, and dark, and beautiful and tragic, in a way that is how a story should be told."[7]
The series premiere received universal acclaim from critics.[8] Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter gave the series a very positive review, calling it "excellent, absorbing and addictive. When each episode ends, you long for the next — a hallmark of great dramas." Goodman also praised Mireille Enos's performance as the lead character Sarah, saying "It's not until you watch Enos play Sarah for a while that it sinks in — there hasn't been a female American character like her probably ever."[9] Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker gave it a B+, saying "The acting is strikingly good" and that "Some viewers may find The Killing a little too cold and deliberate, but give it time. Its intensity builds steadily, giving the series unexpected power."[10] Alex Strachan of The Vancouver Sun says the series "is soaked in atmosphere and steeped in the stark realism of Scandinavian crime novelists Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson" and that it "is not as much about a young girl's murder as it is a psychological study of what happens afterward, how a tight-knit community tries to recover and how a dead child's mother, father and siblings learn to deal with their pain in their own private ways."[11] Matt Roush of TV Guide applauded the series, calling the acting "tremendous" and that he "was instantly hooked by the moody atmosphere of this season-long murder mystery set in Seattle." He went on to say "What really stands out for me, in this age of cookie-cutter procedurals, is how The Killing dramatizes the devastation a violent death has on a family, a community, on the people involved in the investigation. Nothing about this show is routine."[12]
Subsequent episodes were met with lesser praise by some critics, criticizing the show's reliance upon increasingly implausible red herrings to drive each episode, and the withholding of details about each characters' backgrounds, especially Rosie, thus making them difficult to relate with or empathize.[13][14] The first season finale was met with negative reviews from a number of critics. The Los Angeles Times called it "one of the most frustrating finales in TV history",[15] with Alan Sepinwall of HitFix.com calling the end "insulting".[16] Finally, Maureen Ryan of AOL TV said the season "killed off any interest I had in ever watching the show again."[17] "[The show] began last spring looking like the smartest, most stylish pilot in years," complained Heather Havrilevsky in The New York Times Magazine. "Fast-forward to the finale, in which we learn that what we've been watching is actually a 26-hour-long episode of Law & Order, and we're only halfway through it."[18]
The premiere was AMC's second-highest original series premiere following The Walking Dead. The premiere drew 2.7 million viewers and a 2 household rating. The two encores of the premiere episode brought the ratings of the premiere up to a total of 4.6 million total viewers and a 3.7 household rating.[19] The UK premiere on Channel 4 brought in 2.2 million viewers.[20]
The series was nominated for three awards at the 1st Critics' Choice Television Awards. It was nominated Best Drama Series while actresses Mireille Enos and Michelle Forbes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in Drama Series, respectively.[21] The series received six nominations for the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. Mireille Enos and Michelle Forbes were nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, respectively.[22] The pilot episode was nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; Veena Sud for writing and Patty Jenkins for directing. It also received nominations for Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series and Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series.[23] The series has received a nomination for Best New Series for the 2012 Writers Guild of America Awards.[24] Mireille Enos has received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a TV Drama for the 69th Golden Globe Awards.[25]
| Country | Channel | Premiere date |
|---|---|---|
| Lithuania | TV3 Lithuania | October 25, 2011[26] |
| Hong Kong | TVB Pearl | January 11, 2012[27] |
Season one promotion on AMC's The Killing website included "Rosie's Room", a virtual simulation of murder victim Rosie Larsen's bedroom that users could explore in order to learn more about Rosie's life and search for secrets and clues that could help lead to the discovery of who is responsible for her untimely death. Users could peek inside Rosie's dresser, look under her bed, listen to her answering machine messages, flip through her vinyl record collection, and explore her laptop computer to access her social networking profile, vlogs, photos and emails.[28] Season one promotion also included an interactive application called the "Suspect Tracker", where users could vote each week for who they think is the prime suspect in the murder investigation and discuss their theories about the case and its suspects with other fans.[29] A personality quiz titled "How Would You Be Cast in a Crime Thriller?" was also released prior to season one, which told users what part they would be cast in on The Killing based on their reactions to various crime-related situations.[30] AMC's The Killing website also featured exclusive sneak peek and behind the scenes videos, trivia games, numerous photo galleries, episode and character guides, a blog, and a community forum.
|
||||||||||||||