56 Days series review:
Not every character in a movie or even a web series needs complexity by default. Take a campy murder mystery such as 56 Days on Prime Video, for instance. This is the kind of show that should have used its wonderfully layered plot to elevate itself and deliver pure, pulpy thrills. However, the performances in the central roles are not effective enough and the creators forget to have some fun with its premise, instead focussing more on saddling its detectives with unnecessary stakes just to stretch the runtime. The show begins promisingly, with a decomposed body in a bathtub and investigators searching for clues in the apartment. They immediately sense foul play but cannot tell whether the body belongs to a man or a woman.
Creators: Karyn Usher and Lisa Zwerling
Cast: Dove Cameron, Avan Jogia, Karla Souza, Dorian Missick
Streamer: Prime Video
Usually, in a murder mystery, we see detectives cutting straight to the chase and doing some proper investigation, with the necessary tests and witness inquiries. In 56 Days, however, this hardly happens, and the investigators spend most of the time second-guessing the identity of the killer and their whereabouts, even as the forensics process takes forever to complete. Meanwhile, one of the detectives is deeply involved with the possible suspect in another case, putting her own job and reputation at risk. This personal angle diverges considerably from the central mystery, thus sidelining it to an extent. It serves little purpose except perhaps to meet the eight-episode requirement of the streamer.
The series also keeps cutting back and forth between the present day involving the investigators and a past featuring a young man and woman, named Oliver (Avan Jogia) and Ciara (Dove Cameron). Oliver is struggling with deep trauma and has a violent past that he is desperately trying to evade. Meanwhile, Ciara is unreliable and has an ulterior motive. She is cunning, manipulative and deceptive, but he is too naive and troubled to even notice this. Every other conversation involving the two ends up in an erotic scene. For a good time, you keep wondering whether 56 Days is all sex without a purpose. While the eroticism may be necessary to establish the fatal attraction of these characters, the narrative becomes stagnant because the show relies too much on it. Consequently, it comes across as another pretentious layer that tries to add depth where there is none. We get a flashback explaining Oliver and Ciara’s mysterious past only towards the end of the series. It also does not help that Jogia and Cameron are unconvincing in their portrayals.
Oliver has major sleep and anxiety issues, but Jogia is always so prim and proper and hardly breaks a sweat. You see flashes of his talents, such as one brilliant scene where he confesses to his crimes soon after witnessing an accident. However, much of his performance only amounts to mere posturing, lacking the necessary internal layers. Likewise, Cameron struggles to balance Ciara’s conniving nature with the intimacy that the screenplay demands. The dialogues do a better job of communicating her feelings and emotions than Cameron’s performance. In comparison, the flashback portions, involving the younger selves of these characters, work wonders for the show, thanks partly to the performances of those actors. The directors are also responsible for these flaws.
The filmmakers are guilty of spoonfeeding as well, which is evident mostly in how they keep using a ‘Today’ card each time the show cuts back to the present. It is as if we have not seen these detectives enough. Speaking of which, at one point, one of them quips, looking at the character who ends up dying, “There goes their last elevator ride to the bathtub.” 56 Days needed more of this humour and self-awareness to make the most of its pulpy premise.
