Karla Souza and Dorian Crossmond Missick also star in the drama based on Catherine Ryan Howard's bestseller about an affair that results in the discovery of a corpse decomposing in a tub.
, Prime Video’s new murder mystery thriller based on Catherine Ryan Howard’s bestselling novel, is the TV version of a forgettable fling. On first impression it’s exciting, or at least intriguing enough to convince you to come back for a second date, maybe a third.
But the longer you stick around, the more you start to suspect there’s not muchthere. It’s a pretty face in slick outfits, charming enough to distract you for a little while, but ultimately just parroting the same old lines you’ve heard a million times already.For a while, however, the sheer grossness of its central mystery is enough to lure in some interest. By the time the police have been called in to investigate an unidentified body in a luxury building, it’s been decomposing so long that it looks less like a human than a soup: chunks of half-melted flesh floating in a bath of chemical ooze. The sight is grotesque enough to make an impression even in a TV landscape absolutely littered with opening-scene corpses of mysterious origin. The disposal suggests a level of calculated depravity beyond that of your typical desperate robber or underpaid hitman — one that seems particularly startling in contrast to the meet-cute that actually gets thigs going, once the series jumps back 56 days earlier.), two strangers both new to Boston. She is a doe-eyed IT tech living out of a termite-infested studio in an unfashionable neighborhood. He’s a rich dude with a job at a prestigious architecture firm and access to a luxe corporate apartment that will someday become the aforementioned crime scene. He makes the first move, complimenting her NASA tote bag after spotting her in a bougie grocery store. She gives as good as she gets, impressing him by listing all the NASA space shuttles by memory. Their first date at a chichi cocktail bar goes well until it doesn’t, but the connection is strong enough that a few days later, they agree to go on another.one goes so nicely that she spends the night at his place and then moves in within a matter of days. Naturally, neither is quite as they seem. Oliver is running from a dark past that may or may not include a suspicious death. Ciara has ulterior motives of her own, which may or may not be connected to said past.is billed as an erotic thriller, and Oliver and Ciara spend much of the first few episodes dutifully screwing in beds and cars and random alleyways. Jogia and Cameron share some decent chemistry, and these scenes are titillating in the way that watching two impossibly beautiful, mostly naked people throw their bodies together almost can’t help but be. But their coupling lacks the something extra — like a playfulness, or a deep emotionality, or even a real sense of danger — to make them truly memorable. This is a problem for a series that hinges on the idea that carnal passion can make people do crazy things, like follow a suspected murderer into an empty construction site, or allow a near-stranger unfettered access to your home, or — for that matter — commit a murder and then try to obscure the evidence in the foulest matter imaginable.suggests halfheartedly that the very wrongness of this courtship is what makes it so hot for them, and for us. But its insistence on playing coy about exactly how wrong it is or why, saving all of Oliver and Ciara’s deepest, darkest secrets until the penultimate flashback episode, is to its own detriment. The choice makes sense from the perspective of a series trying to drag out the suspense as long as possible, ensuring it never runs out of reveals or red herrings to sprinkle over its eight episodes. And I can’t say it’s an entirely unsuccessful one. The twists come fast enough that I never found myself bored while waiting for the next morsel of information to drop about Ciara and Oliver’s sordid pasts. But it closes off the more intimate character work that’d get a viewer deeply invested in this whirlwind romance to begin with. Without a full understanding of the motives and risks at play, it’s hard to get caught up in either the cat-and-mouse thrill of watching these shady players circle one another or the notes of real vulnerability that eventually start to creep in. Even when the characters say outright what they’re feeling in a particular moment, it’s difficult to know how much stock to put into the words of people whose defining characteristic, as far as we know, is their very untrustworthiness. The biggest reveals, when they finally arrive, seem intended to sell us on the idea that human beings are more complex than they might seem at first glance. Instead, they do the opposite, offloading one-dimensional cruelty to certain characters to make others look sympathetic by comparison. Maybe psychological and moral complexity is too much to expect from a series that plays like an airport bestseller — fast and trashy and nothing very deep. But with neither enough heat to sell the romance’s darkness nor enough warmth to sell its unexpected notes of sweetness, a story that begins with a memorably toxic stew leaves behind nothing but a faint sour tinge.Most Popular‘Tell Me Lies’ Creator Dives Into That Jaw-Dropping Finale and Explains Why the Show Is Ending: “We Couldn’t F*** It Up”The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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