(CNN)The blueprint for "Landscapers," a four-part British miniseries airing connected HBO, turns retired to beryllium considerably sturdier than the construction, somewhat wasting the imagination pairing of Olivia Colman and David Thewlis. It's inactive an absorbing detour into bizarre existent crime, but truthful stylized arsenic to blunt the wide interaction by being excessively cute for its ain good.
The task is built astir the unusual lawsuit of Chris and Susan Edwards, who were convicted successful 2014 of murdering her parents and burying their bodies successful their garden. The communicative opens, a trifle confusingly, determination past the mediate with the 2 connected the lam, having fled to France, arsenic they negociate with investigators astir a imaginable instrumentality to England arsenic the constabulary location successful connected what came to beryllium known arsenic the Mansfield murders.
Colman's Susan has an airy, astir unreal quality, deferring to her hubby Chris (Thewlis) and astatine 1 constituent saying, "He's practical, due to the fact that I'm not."
What they share, arsenic documented via the contiguous framework and black-and-white flashbacks, is simply a emotion of aged movies and American westerns successful particular, with beardown soundless types similar Gary Cooper emblazoned crossed the screen. (They besides stock a fondness for the French histrion Gérard Depardieu, penning him instrumentality letters.)
So far, truthful beauteous good, but arsenic laid retired by writer Ed Sinclair and manager Will Sharpe ("The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), "Landscapers" indulges successful excessively galore flights of fancy, including elaborate reenactments of their grounds taking the assemblage some wrong their not-entirely-convincing explanations arsenic good arsenic their heads.
As it turns out, the miniseries' astir effectual constituent comes astatine the extremity of each episode, moving quality clips that reenforce however intimately this unusual emotion communicative adheres to reality, including the information that Chris and Susan (who, it's noted, continued to profess their innocence) did each they could to person radical her parents were inactive live portion spending their wealth acquiring Hollywood memorabilia.
"Unless 1 of you tells us, we're ne'er going to cognize precisely what happened," the cops counsel them, underscoring the confounding quality of the crime.
In summation to "The Crown," Colman (an Oscar victor for "The Favourite") is getting raves for her relation successful the upcoming Netflix movie "The Lost Daughter," truthful HBO is astir apt blessed to thrust those coattails. By that measurement "Landscapers" is watchable capable but errs successful taking a lawsuit that required scant melodramatic embellishment and past proceeding to bash truthful anyway.
"Landscapers" premieres Dec. 6 astatine 9 p.m. ET connected HBO, which, similar CNN, is simply a portion of WarnerMedia.
English (US) ·