Furious, the new Disney+ series from creator Elizabeth Meriwether, is a crime drama fueled by female rage. Starring Emmy Rossum as FBI agent Alice Black, the show follows her investigation of a female serial killer played by Lola Petticrew. The eight-episode run is described as a proper grownup thriller that demands attention.
Plot and Characters
The series opens with a man crawling across an apartment floor as a woman in a cat mask watches him. Later identified as Catherine (Petticrew), she calmly dispenses candy to a child before returning to inject the man and watch him die. Emmy Rossum's Alice Black is a former NYPD officer who left after being assaulted by her boyfriend, a fellow cop. Now working the FBI tip line, she gets a call from a friend about a suspicious death that leads her to a sex trafficking ring.
Powerful Performances
The drama is dominated by three complicated female characters: Rossum's Alice, Petticrew's Catherine, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Nora Washington, a sex crimes unit boss who becomes Alice's mentor. A fantastic supporting cast and a dense, lean script make this television for grownups. There is a quietly magnificent scene by a hospital bed where Nora delivers a monologue about her years spent watching children being abused, distilling the bone-deep despair of never being able to make a difference. “You think you’re ever going to catch anyone who matters?” she asks Alice. It is rhetorical, and Alice knows better than to answer.
A New Subgenre?
With its focus on a network of enablers and predators, Furious may represent the birth of a new subgenre: the Epstein thriller. The series asks how individuals and society survive such knowledge, and when we will become furious enough to make a difference.
