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\u201cThe Ink Black Heart\u201d faced a challenge from the start: Its source is a thousand-page doorstop of a novel that is littered with replications of group chats, tweets and text exchanges. The book is an exhausting typographical obstacle course; that each of its 107 chapters begins with a snippet of poetry as an epigraph does not make reading it any easier.<\/p>\n
Tom Edge, who has written the bulk of the TV series, and Sue Tully, the show\u2019s longtime director, wisely make no attempt to put those reams of online chatter onscreen, settling for the occasional spoken reference. And they have condensed the story adroitly, eliminating whole plot lines to focus on the central investigation. They have not, however, been able to make the case much more interesting.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a homicide involving the creators of a macabre online cartoon, and the suspects are a thinly drawn, too-numerous group of obsessive fans, romantic and business partners and other hangers-on. You sense that Rowling\u2019s interest was less in revealing the killer than in grinding a particular ax \u2014 the story\u2019s message is that the successful artist is defenseless against the amateur who \u201cthinks that your characters basically belong to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would help if we cared about these people, but the quickly dispatched victim is virtually the only character who evinces any talent or depth of feeling. (One especially air-headed suspect notes that she is unlikely to be the killer because, as she says, \u201cI\u2019m antifa.\u201d) The season has a slightly sour atmosphere along with an airless, puzzle-solving approach to its mystery.<\/p>\n
This renders \u201cThe Ink Black Heart\u201d a disappointment in the wake of earlier chapters like \u201cLethal White\u201d and \u201cTroubled Blood,\u201d which were textured family dramas that used crime-solving as a framework. It still has the show\u2019s great strength, however: the relationship between Cormoran and Robin \u2014 respectful, deeply affectionate, forever on the verge of romantic \u2014 and the enormously appealing performances in those roles by Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n