Karen and I finished the third season of The Sinner last night. It's a Netflix detective noir, American-style, starring Bill Pullman. I think it's very good, although I hardly ever see it written about.
Pullman is one of those American character actors whose face you recognize but whose name probably escapes you. He was in Cagney & Lacey on TV in the 1980s and in lots of movies - Sleepless in Seattle, While You Were Sleeping, Independence Day - never, that I'm aware, until this series, as the lead.
Pullman, now a grizzled veteran, plays detective Harry Ambrose of the Rochester Police Dept. A widower with a grown daughter and grandson, Harry is close to retiring but still married to the job. He's a reticent, emotionally bottled-up man, who's inclined to go deep on his cases. Pullman really does a great job making him real.
The show's "gimmick" is that the cases always appear open and shut - certainly the perpetrator is known from the beginning - but Harry senses something more behind the crime, and ends up getting very close to the suspect/perpetrator in his attempts to uncover the truth.
In this latest, he investigates a car accident in which the driver dies but the passenger, a charismatic young History teacher at a local private school, survives. There are inconsistencies, and Harry suspects the survivor has deliberately let his friend die by delaying calling 911 and preventing the dying man from calling.
Harry inserts himself in the suspect's life to try and gain his confidence and get him to confess, and becomes convinced he's a dangerous man on the edge - which turns out to be the case.
Or has Harry helped push him?
This one in particular reminds me a little of True Detective in its emotional intensity and...gnarliness. And this time, as with Matthew McConaughey versus Woody Harrelson in the first True Detective, Harry gets a foil in the young straight-arrow detective, Nick Soto.
*
It was a gorgeous day: sun and cloud, a high of 12C. It felt like spring, but we know winter hasn't finished yet. Even Karen got out for a walk, though not with me. She met our friend Joan for a brief ramble around downtown.
My walk took me up Talbot, over to Grosvenor and down to Victoria. I had thought of walking all the way to the university but went into Gibbons at the Victoria St. entrance instead. Of course, I ended up over by the old Willows between the river and the swimming pool. They looked particularly noble today, the bright sun etching all the incredible detail of their bark.
I was reminded, noticing the white paint marks on some of the trunks, that I had emailed the city arborist when those marks first appeared a few years ago. I was concerned the trees might be marked for removal, although they look as solid and unshakeable as ever and nothing has happened in the intervening years. I never got a response, which still ticks me off.
They had better not try and take down those trees!
Oh, yes, or what? What will you do? Chain yourself to the trees? Send letter bombs to the city offices?
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