I really like the fact that there are still series and movies that surprise me and make me watch them in one breath. The rule is, when a series or movie stays with you after watching it and doesn’t get out of your head for the next few days, you know you’ve hit a homerun.

The last time I felt that way was after the first season of the series “The Sinner” with the amazing Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman. I remember getting stuck at work that day and I got home around seven o’clock. After a while, I sat in front of the TV, turned on Netflix and when I saw the cover of the series, it immediately caught my eye. It occurred to me that I was watching the interview with Jessica Biel when she presented the series to Jimmy Fallon, but I completely forgot about it. Obviously now was the time to watch it, and as soon as I started, I thought, “Oh hell, there goes my sleep.”

Their concept is one season, one case, each season with eight episodes, neither too much nor too little. As usual, everything starts very innocently, we meet a seemingly normal family, a man (Christopher Abbott) and a woman (Jessica Biel) with a small child at a family dinner, normal conversations, normal behavior. But as the episode progresses, you can tell that something is wrong with Cora (Jessica Biel).

That ingenious acting, something I could never understand, how do they manage to show so much pain and suffering in their eyes. It is simply not possible to pretend that, you must have some real life (past) pain that you are evoking at that moment, to channel the suffering of the character that’s being interpreted.

At first you think she will try to commit suicide, or run away and leave her family or something will pop in her head and hurt someone else. It’s certainly one of those things, but you’ll never guess which. It is summer and the family is getting ready to go to the nearby beach. This is where the unexpected happens. Peeling a pear for her son and anxiously looking at the company in front of them, which is playing music louder and louder, Cora suddenly gets up and stabs the guy in front of her seven times with a knife. She is taken to the station, admits that she committed the crime, there are hundreds of witnesses and it all looks like an open and shut case, but the interesting thing is that she assures them that she does not know the man she killed and that she does not know why she killed him. The case is taken by the brilliant Bill Pullman, who plays Detective Harry Ambrose, who is determined to find out the cause of the murder and does not believe that a woman would kill in cold blood and without motive.

You have to see for yourself further, after this introduction the development of this mentally painful and amazing story begins. The beauty of this season is that you really cannot guess in which direction it will go, as you get to know the hard life of Cora you will get to know the suffering of the detective for whom we find out more about in the second season, but it is more than obvious that he recognizes his pain, his sorrow, his suffering in the murderers, that is why he takes over these cases. Terrible traumas, at times it is uncomfortable to watch but believe me it will not let you go to the very end. My advice before watching, be in a better mood and do not start in the middle of the work week.

I am currently watching the second season, I can say that it is interesting, of course it is incomparable with the first, and for the third I read comments that it was catastrophic. Not to sound like a broken record, but we’re used to it.

As I mentioned in the title, I am happy with just one genius season.

For Camera Obscura,

Elena Krstevska

Film enthusiast

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