«Black Bird» is an American crime drama miniseries developed by Dennis Lehane, based on the 2010 autobiographical novel In with the Devil: a Fallen Hero.
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- Black Bird is an American crime drama miniseries.
- It was developed by Dennis Lehane.
- It was based on the 2010 autobiographical novel In with the Devil: a Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption by James Keene with Hillel Levin
- The miniseries consists of 6 episodes.
- The six-episode miniseries premiered on July 8, 2022, on Apple TV+.
- The series received critical acclaim with particular praise toward Jimmy Keene’s original story and its cast.
- The series was announced in January 2021.
- Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser were cast to star.
- Ray Liotta would be added to the cast in March, with Greg Kinnear and Sepideh Moafi joining the next month.
- The six-episode limited series premiered on July 8, 2022, on Apple TV+.
- Production for the series began in New Orleans in April 2021.
- Ray Liotta died before the release of the show, so the third episode is dedicated to his memory.
- His daughter Karsen Liotta appears near the end of Black Bird: The Place I Lie (2022) as Audrey, the girl being interviewed by FBI agents about her bizarre past encounters with serial killer suspect Larry Hall.
- Based on the true story of James Keene, a one-time drug dealer, trying to elicit a confession from serial killer Larry Hall.
- Keene himself can be glimpsed playing correctional officer #8 in the season finale Black Bird: You Promised (2022).
- “In with the Devil” production is using the working title “Hans Bubby” and filmed in New Orleans in a secure location.
- “Big Jim” Keene was actually a firefighter in the city of Kankakee & not a Kankakee police officer.
- In Black Bird: The Place I Lie (2022), when Brian Miller and Lauren McCauley are looking for Tricia Reitler’s body, one of the songs playing on the radio is “Run-Around” by Blues Traveler – which is what Larry Hall was doing to the police with his distorted facts.
- Ray Liotta and the character he played, Big Jim Keene, both died at 67 y/o.
- The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 97% approval rating with an average rating of 8.3/10, based on 78 critic reviews.
- The website’s critics consensus reads, “Dennis Lehane’s penchant for authentic grit is on full display in Blackbird, an absorbing prison drama distinguished by its moral complexity and elevated by an outstanding ensemble.”
- Metacritic which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 80 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.[11]
- Mike Hale of The New York Times stated, “Despite that imbalance in the dramatic weight, Black Bird is mostly engaging — Hauser is onscreen a lot, and the production has a hushed quality, with occasional expressionistic touches, that is reminiscent of David Fincher’s crime stories.
- It’s at its best in the fourth episode, directed by Jim McKay (“Our Song”): Egerton is more relaxed, and Hauser even sharper than usual, and their scenes together have an almost sexual charge. And McKay’s depictions of a prison riot and the subsequent cleanup, meticulously supervised by Hall, are among the show’s best moments.”
- Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the series 3.5 stars out of 4, commenting, “Its release in the era of a national obsession with true crime could lead people to dismiss Black Bird, but this show is worth your time even if you don’t usually buy into the genre. It reminded me more of rich, character-driven material like The Night Of than so many of the ‘ripped from the headlines’ mini-series of late. It has the weight of some of Lehane’s best fiction, even though it’s all so disturbingly true.”
