Apple TV+'s Shining Girls wouldn't work without Elisabeth Moss

Los Angeles Times

The limited series thriller based on Lauren Beukes' bestselling novel, created by Silka Luisa, takes an original turn with its serial killer story -- one that wouldn't work without Moss' acting ability. "It’s taking nothing away from the rest of a fine cast to note that Shining Girls is 75% the Elisabeth Moss Show, and not merely because the world turns literally around Kirby," says Robert Lloyd. "An actress of great intelligence and emotional nuance, immune to convention, Moss excels at characters with a note, or a block chord, of complication. Turning 40 this year, which is to say evidently older than Kirby, she creates a chronologically amorphous person whom fate has locked in time. (She plays her even younger as well, in what might be called a flashback in a more linear tale.) Moss softens Kirby’s edges, pulls the body out of her voice, and tucks her head into her shoulders; she gives her a hunted animal look. This will change, as she comes out of hiding and goes, incrementally, on the offensive. Her choices are never pat; the series wouldn’t be half as good without her." Lloyd adds: "That the showrunner and the directors (including Moss) are women may have something to do with the series avoiding the more egregious faults of the genre; violence for the most part happens offscreen, or quickly; gore is restricted to crime scene photos. The violence is not sexual — there is nothing in the way of sex at all, for that matter — though it is gendered: A man is killing women."

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• Shining Girls fails Elisabeth Moss: "It’s easy to see why someone would want to see the first 10 minutes of Shining Girls. But the other 396 minutes? Forget it," says Mick LaSalle. "No one does psychological, physical and emotional torment like Elisabeth Moss. With the right material, she’s the most interesting actress working today, but Shining Girls fails to give her a chance to showcase what she does best." LaSalle adds: "Moss is always fascinating, and for a while the series is able to skate by on the turmoil she brings into every scene. She has a way of seeming insecure yet hostile; of presenting herself as withdrawn, even as we’re able to read that her mind is racing. In her very atmosphere she suggests the possibility that anything might happen, and one of those things we believe is that the series will get better. But it doesn’t."
• There's an ingenious method in Shining Girls' mind-bending madness: "Although suspense takes hold around the eight-episode season’s midpoint, the show moves slowly at first; as frustrating as that can be, it’s the only way to build a world that keeps mutating," says Judy Berman. "Scenes recur, with minimal explanation. Settings, hairstyles, and characters change, often slightly but always suddenly. Instead of a single performance, Moss gives a cluster of them, finely calibrating Kirby’s posture, confidence, and anxiety level to reflect each new reality. The villain, Harper (Jamie Bell), is clear to viewers from the start. The mystery is his apparent omniscience and how it connects to Kirby’s crisis. Because the show sticks so close to her fractured consciousness, we come to appreciate how hard it is for her to survive, let alone conduct such an unusual investigation."
• Most frustrating about Shining Girls is the degree to which it wastes strong, accomplished performers on underbaked characters: "Moss’s refusal to phone anything in shines as brightly as ever, but her story here feels less like a new destination than a faded slideshow of places she’s taken us before," says Laura Bradley, adding: "In fact, every facet of Shining Girls feels a little too restrained. The series might bill itself as a mystery-thriller, but its tone often feels more procedural. Aesthetically, it’s more Law & Order than Zodiac; the blue-and gray-filtered Chicago cityscape is more drab than gritty, cold but never chilling. As successful as this series might be intellectually, it also fails to establish the lurching anxiety necessary to actually grip its audience by the gut. In the absence of that tension, we’re left with another lackluster thriller that never shines as brightly as it could."
• Shining Girls is a profoundly, perhaps unwisely ambitious drama: "Not content with being a thriller about solving the murder of a few dead women, it throws in a concept that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with the source material: the notion that Harper is somehow able to control or travel through time, becoming an almost omnipotent character," says Ralph Jones. "In a novel, there would be ample space to explore and explain the various causes and effects implied in this awkward premise. Unfortunately, in the TV adaptation, there is no narrator to guide you through. Some viewers will find this frustrating, and may be unconvinced by the few attempts to explain the physics involved, but there is so much more to enjoy here than the inner workings of the plot."
• Shining Girls fails to fuse its conflicting spheres in an effective manner, leading to jarring tonal shifts: "It doesn’t help that the show’s visual style is overwhelmingly bland from the get-go, with desaturated colors and compositions that evoke nothing in particular," says David Robb. "There’s a keen attention to detail in recreating the story’s various period settings, but this only detracts from the impact of its plot contrivances, making them feel even more far-fetched."
• Even when the plot begins to drag, Shining Girls is capable of trotting out a riveting set piece: "Apple TV+ is on a real heater right now," says Alan Sepinwall. "Severance and Pachinko both have good arguments for the title of the best show of 2022 so far, and last year’s champ, For All Mankind, will be back in June. Couple that with other recent charmers like The Afterparty and Slow Horses, plus ongoing successes like Ted Lasso and Mythic Quest, and the streamer’s quality-over-quantity approach has been paying real dividends, even if not everything works. This is another terrific show. Just don’t expect to come out of it being able to explain a lot of what happens. Kirby’s story is all that matters, and that plays out as well as you would expect when you pair a great actor with a great director and potent material."
• Shining Girls is another TV series that would've worked better as a movie: "Elisabeth Moss acts in, executive produces, and directs episodes of this adaptation of Lauren Beukes’ novel that hops among timelines — and she does her jobs elegantly," says Daniel D'Addario. "(Other episodes are directed by Michelle MacLaren and Daina Reid, and the show was created by Silka Luisa.) The problem seems to be in the source material, and the way it overlays a format — the TV series that might have been a film but instead ends up stretching to fill needless hours — to which the TV industry seems to have become addicted."
• Shining Girls gets the details right: "Whenever your profession is showcased in a movie or on a TV show, it’s impossible not to notice what is accurate and what would NEVER happen," says Richard Roeper. "Whether you’re a cop or a construction worker, a lawyer or a pharmacist, a farmer or a chemist—doesn’t matter. You’ll be watching this movie or that show, and you’ll nod in recognition at the moments of accuracy, and howl in derision when they fly off the rails in the name of poetic license. In the elegantly constructed, hauntingly memorable and beautifully filmed new Apple TV+ series Shining Girls, series executive producer, sometimes director and star Elisabeth Moss plays one Kirby Mazrachi, an archivist at the Chicago Sun-Times in the early 1990s—and as someone who was working as a reporter and columnist at the Sun-Times at that time, I was left mesmerized at how the production team expertly, dare I say perfectly, captured the very essence of the paper in that era. They got it right, from the newsroom with its metal desks and clunky computers and piles of notebooks and papers to the printing press and of course the marvelously ugly, barge-like Sun-Times Building on Wabash Avenue along the Chicago River, which has been digitally restored."
• This may be the dead girl mystery to end all dead girl mysteries: "The first four episodes are built with a precision worth appreciating on its own," says Ben Travers. "Trust is earned steadily. Each narrative choice feels purposeful. So when events shift from what’s expected of prestige crime thrillers, you’re already on board."
• 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," says Brian Tallerico. "At first, her performance felt a little too mannered for me, but she adjusts to the intensity as Kirby becomes more confident in the fact that she’s not merely going crazy. Moss is simply one of the best actresses of her generation, the kind of performer who can sell a premise as out-there as this one. She’s ably balanced by Jamie Bell, who does some of the best work of his career in a truly menacing, terrifying performance. 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. Stalkers and abusers can sometimes feel like they control the world. This one actually does."
• Shining Girl loses the bestselling book's key feature: "The Apple TV+ adaptation, created and written by producer Silka Luisa, doubles down on the high-concept aspect, nearly jettisoning what made the novel truly brilliant and innovative," says Laura Miller. "Elisabeth Moss’ Kirby is a woman barely holding herself together because at any moment her entire life could change. Sometimes she lives by herself and has a cat named Grendel; then suddenly she’s living with her aging rock ’n’ roller mom (Amy Brenneman) in the same apartment building but a different unit and Grendel is a dog. Sometimes she’s married to a protective photographer (Chris Chalk). Sometimes she has short, frumpy hair, a shapeless wardrobe, and works as a researcher for a newspaper. (The main action is set in the early 1990s, when papers kept clipping files in a department called the morgue.) Sometimes she’s a reporter with a stylish haircut, makeup, and low-cut blouses that reveal the top of the scar Harper (Jamie Bell) left on her abdomen. 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. Her only constant is her desire to catch Harper, whose face she has never even seen."
• Moss is perfect for Shining Girls: "When you add Moss’s remarkable, nuanced performance to the slightly slow pacing and the audience being arguably too far ahead of the protagonists, Shining Girls works better as a character study than a thriller (though it’s certainly worth watching as the latter)," says Lucy Mangan. "Kirby’s constant renegotiation of a world that changes without notice or permission around her is as fine an evocation of the profound and lingering results of trauma as you’ll see. To live a life suddenly full of unknowns, with the familiar made unfamiliar, the trustworthy now tainted by terrible knowledge, is something anyone who has been assaulted will recognise. One reality is replaced by another and another and another as you take two steps forwards and one back towards a new normality. Even as the female victim count adds up, Shining Girls keeps its integrity and never backs away from this underlying truth."
• It's important to know Shining Girls is a fantasy and crime show: "Having seen the entire series of eight episodes, I can safely say that I enjoyed Shining Girls, but had you asked me at the halfway point, you probably would have gotten a different answer," says Therese Lacson. "It is vital, as a viewer, to know before going in that this is a crime show but also a fantasy show. Without that knowledge (which I did not have), the show is jarring and confusing. There are twists in the show that flip Kirby's life upside down. Suddenly she comes home and her cat is a dog, her mom isn't there, and she's married to her co-worker. These changes are unfortunately something that Kirby has learned to live with, but that doesn't mean it is an effective method of storytelling for us as viewers."
• What drew Wagner Moura to Shining Girls?: "So many things, honestly," he says. "I think the writing was great (Series creator) Silka Luisa managed to balance a mix of genres, which is difficult to achieve. It’s a crime story with science-fiction. At its core, it’s about femicide, which is something that resonates with me personally. I was so excited to be playing a journalist. That’s my own background. I graduated and worked as one for quite a while in my career early on. 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. Most people get their information from social media. World leaders are discrediting the work of journalists, which is a dangerous thing. I was proud to be playing a good albeit troubled reporter. Dan is a guy who takes his craft seriously."
• Elisabeth Moss usually pulls from her life in tackling new roles, but she couldn't do that with Shining Girls: "That was actually the hard thing about this one because there wasn’t really anything I could pull from in my own life," she says. "I have not experienced or know anyone who has experienced their whole world-changing, all the time. Somebody who’s experienced trauma, I’ve played, but I’ve never had that, so that was a new challenge for me that I really, really liked. It was about, how do I play somebody whose world is shifting around them, and they are kind of used to it? They know what’s happening, but they don’t know why. There was no reference point for that. I couldn’t go talk to anybody about that. There was nothing in my own life that I could equate that with. What I liked about this was actually the fact that I couldn’t do that. I had to really invent it."