A young woman, Marie, is raped in her home by a man who barely leaves any traces behind. After the police initially seemed to do everything in their power to catch the perpetrator, they conclude that, due to a tangled past and major life changes, she has found the assault and is able to withdraw her report. At the same time in another part of the state, two other police officers are investigating a suspected serial rapist.
The craving for true crime seems insatiable. So to the mild degree that the genre, along with the one that Ubelievable belongs to (we might call it "crime based on a true crime"), has begun to out-compete pure fiction criminals and criminals. Unbelievable is based on a journalistic review of the networks Propublica and The marshall project and is based on a series of real rape cases and the police investigating them.
This insight is hardly new, but after the recent flood of true crime and reality-based crime fiction in all its forms, I begin to feel a certain disgust for being "entertained" by details about cut bodies, raped children (hello, Leaving Neverland) and studied maiming. Should you rate how well these rapes are suitable for stretch watching on Netflix? The serial performer often becomes the perverted anti-hero in the drama and the fascination we feel for his methods is the red thread.
But Unbelievable manages to be something more than gratifying in the criminal's psyche and cat-and-rat game with the police. It is respectful of its source material, the victims of the rape are well-written, complex characters and it is at the same time exciting television drama.
The series has a case: Class and background affect the credibility of a victim, however true it may be, and you cannot expect those who have been traumatized to react the same. In addition, Unbelievable manages to convey its message without being ambiguous and writing the viewer on the nose. Misunderstood well-being and human incompetence can be just as harmful to crime victims as pure evil, and it is better fiction.
Unbelievable's protagonists are one of the victims of the rapist and the police who chase him. Toni Colette is a personal favorite, but her role is unfortunately the minus of the series. After receiving a series of carefully written portraits in the first few sections that should avoid the usual snout series' conventional victim-perpetrator-police roles, Colettes Grace Rasmussen feels most like a rather worn-out template: The female cop who is twice as tough like their male colleagues, speaks quickly and does not have time for social conventions such as ordinary hyphen.
Kaitlyn Dever's strongest role in the role of Marie Adler, whose life is turned upside down because she is not believed. Her facial expression every time she is betrayed by those who should help her (about four - five times per episode) is like a small cut in the heart.
If we are to continue to be entertained by serial killers and rapists, more series such as Unbelievable are needed - less freezing in the perpetrator's psyche and more flesh and blood behind the victims who are usually reduced to photos of bruised body parts that police officers get in the first scene.