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After New York and Los Angeles, what is the third city of American crime drama? Boston, Chicago and San Francisco can all make claims, and many might choose Baltimore for \u201cHomicide: Life on the Street\u201d and \u201cThe Wire.\u201d But lately, another city has been moving up the charts: Philadelphia is suddenly a hot location for moody stories about drugs and murder.<\/p>\n
In the mini-series \u201cLong Bright River,\u201d premiering as a binge watch on Thursday on Peacock, and \u201cDope Thief,\u201d beginning Friday on Apple TV+, Philadelphia is the postindustrial crucible<\/a> \u2014 vibrant but violent, caring but crime-ridden \u2014 for tales of working-class heroes doing battle with criminal forces. The shows follow HBO\u2019s 2021 hit \u201cMare of Easttown\u201d and precede another HBO law-enforcement drama, \u201cTask,\u201d that will feature F.B.I. agents in suburban Philadelphia. (And you can throw in the Hulu comedy \u201cDeli Boys,\u201d<\/a> about a crime ring based in Philadelphia-area convenience stores.)<\/p>\n The stars of the two new shows, Amanda Seyfried<\/a> and Brian Tyree Henry<\/a>, play people who are categorically different on the surface but, for dramatic purposes, could almost be the same character. Seyfried\u2019s Mickey Fitzpatrick in \u201cLong Bright River\u201d is a cop who\u2019s protective of the prostitutes on her beat; Henry\u2019s Ray Driscoll in \u201cDope Thief\u201d is an ex-con who robs drug houses by pretending to be a federal agent.<\/p>\n Under the surface, though, the two natives of northern Philadelphia are haunted by similar family traumas, seen in copious flashbacks (fathers figure heavily). And as a result each is in need of redemption and transformation, which is the real through line of each series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They get there in very dissimilar ways, however. \u201cLong Bright River,\u201d which plays like a companion piece to the heavy-going \u201cMare of Easttown,\u201d is a family soap opera onto which a procedural serial-killer mystery has been grafted. \u201cDope Thief\u201d is a hyperbolic, postmodern thriller in the guise of a hard-boiled mystery. Personal taste may largely determine which one you respond to, but here\u2019s a tip: If humor counts for anything, then \u201cDope Thief,\u201d which consistently cuts its angst and violence with reasonably clever, farcical comedy, is the much better use of eight hours.<\/p>\n In \u201cLong Bright River,\u201d Mickey is a single mother with a preternaturally precocious 8-year-old, Thomas (the very charming Callum Vinson); her only family support, if you can call it that, comes from her abrasive grandfather (John Doman). When women on her beat begin to turn up dead at the same time that her estranged sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), goes missing, Mickey starts her own off-the-books investigation.<\/p>\n The mechanics of that detective work \u2014 carried out with the help of Mickey\u2019s former partner, Truman (Nicholas Pinnock), who is on leave from the force \u2014 beggar belief, even by the standards of TV drama. And the eventual resolution is fairly obvious from the outset in terms of who the killer is, and also smack-your-head goofy in terms of how the killer is brought to justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n