Lucy Hale's AMC+ thriller Ragdoll struggles to mix British humor with a true-crime thriller

Paste Magazine

"Ragdoll, a new thriller executive produced by AMC+ and Sid Gentle Films Ltd. (Killing Eve), follows Rose, Detective Inspector Emily Baxter (Thalissa Teixeira), and Detective Constable Lake Edmunds (Lucy Hale) as they track down the person behind the gruesome crime," says Kristen Reid. "After the discovery of the Ragdoll corpse—the cheeky nickname given to the amalgamation of six corpses sewn together —the team receives a sinister message from the killer, naming the next six victims. The final name on the list is none other than DS Rose. Dark and dramatic, Ragdoll feels like it comes directly in the wake of the current cultural obsession with true crime that’s taken over media in the past few years. Documentaries and podcasts recounting graphic murders and sexual assaults flood their respective markets and have made us so desensitized to the true horrors that have been committed, usually against women. Ragdoll, although fully fictional, is paced like these familiar true crime exposés. Each of the three episodes provided for review ends on a reveal and a cliffhanger, begging for the audience to keep watching, even if it feels like it’s happening out of pure necessity and not willful motivation. In a moment of self-awareness, a character prefaces a suggestion with, 'Stop me if this is too podcast-y but…' Hale has even said her love of true crime media led her towards this role. For those like myself who see the true crime genre as potentially exploitative depending on the care given to the subject, this connection feels just a bit crass. Ragdoll verges on pulpy and should be watched purely for entertainment; to consume a retelling of true tragedies in the same way as a dramatized series like this diminishes the world-shattering effects whatever story we’re casually listening to on a podcast. Of course, murder and crime have always been a booming genre for film and television, but there’s something unsettling about Ragdoll’s insistence to be included in the true crime conversation. Perhaps that comes from the series’ wavering and inconsistent tone."

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• Ragdoll is a disappointing Frankenstein's monster of influences: "Toss in shades of Hannibal’s love of beautiful murder. Sprinkle the twin flashlights piercing the darkness moments lifted from X-Files," says Tim Stevens. "Whisk a bit of a Twin Peaks-like rising sense of possible supernatural influences. One could keep going for quite a few sentences and still be missing several influences and references. In fact, throughout the three episodes provided to critics, the sense of 'one ingredient too many' becomes progressively pervasive. The Ragdoll Killer can’t just be an assembler of dead body parts from their victim to get attention. They must also be a possible urban legend of vigilante justice known as Faust. If that feels too simple, don’t worry. The Ragdoll Killer also reveals themselves as the type who can’t help but play cat and mouse with the police. They have a great love of dropping hints and killing in increasingly baroque set-pieces. It’s as though executive producer and writer Freddy Syborn has decided the solution to cliché is just gilding the hell out of the lily. If viewers have to diagram the plot elements to keep track of things, perhaps they won’t notice how even the London setting and plethora of British accents don’t distract from how much of Ragdoll we’ve seen before."
• Ragdoll and Killing Eve couldn't be any more different despite sharing the same producer: "AMC+ is promoting the producing connection between Ragdoll and Killing Eve, but the clever self-awareness that lets Killing Eve upend so many genre tropes is exactly what’s in short supply on Ragdoll," says Daniel Fienberg. "Well, that and a central relationship worth following. Killing Eve has generally been afraid to imagine what it would be without Eve and Villanelle at its center, and Ragdoll suggests that it has been correct to set aside narrative common logic to protect its unlikely core duo. The result in their absence is simply underwhelming, derivative and dour." He adds: "Ragdoll does more for (Lucy) Hale as a professional realignment — a less stylized palate cleanser after shows where cinematographers got lost in her eyes — than Hale’s presence does for Ragdoll. That’s mostly the fault of the series’ writing choices. Hale is every bit as convincing as the scripts let her be, and she has a chirpy energy — toned down, though, from Life Sentence or Katy Keene or Pretty Little Liars — that benefits the show."
• Showrunner Freddy Syborn on adapting Daniel Cole's Ragdoll novel: "It's a really entertaining read; it's this gruesome premise and intriguing," Syborn tells EW. "It's macabre, but Daniel Cole, the author, allowed his characters to still have fun and have a sense of humor. That really appealed to me because people are funny. I think it's very, very, incredibly rare to meet someone who isn't funny. Everyone's got a sense of humor; it's weird to meet someone who doesn't. You talk about it for days after! 'I met this person who didn't crack a smile once.' They stick out a mile. And yet so many thrillers and lots of TV shows don't necessarily acknowledge that."
• Lucy Hale found it refreshing to play a sexually fluid character: “She represents a whole new way of thinking,” says Hale. “People my age and the generation below me, we’re more comfortable talking about our sexuality. Edmonds definitely brings that young, lead-with-your-feelings attitude. It’s one of the many pieces that make up who she is.”