Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Outsider’ On HBO, Where Jason Bateman Is Accused Of A Brutal Child Murder… But Did He Do It?

Police procedurals are usually very cut-and-dried: Someone is murdered, law enforcement investigates, and the bad guy/woman is caught. But Stephen King doesn’t write cut-and-dried stories, which is why his novel The Outsider is about a seemingly airtight murder case that isn’t as airtight as it seems. But which side is right and, more importantly, will the viewer side with? Read on about HBO’s adaptation of King’s novel…

THE OUTSIDER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An aerial view of a small town in Georgia. We see a man walking his dog. We then switch to the dog’s-level view as he sniffs out blood that’s smeared under the passenger door of a white van.

The Gist: The dog, and his owner, eventually find where the blood is coming from: The mutilated body of an 11-year-old boy. The body is in horrific shape, with bite marks, evidence of sodomy and lots of blood. Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) is called to the scene, assisted by Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Yunis Sablo (Yul Vazquez). The sight of the boy, brings back memories of his son, who died of cancer.

Then the narrative goes back and forth between Anderson’s investigation and the very public arrest of Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman), a local teacher and Little League coach. Of course, he insists he’s innocent, citing the fact that he wasn’t even in town at the time of the boy’s murder. But as we see the evidence gathering, eyewitness reports, fingerprints, and video footage not only point to the fact that Terry killed the boy, but he didn’t really spend a lot of time covering his tracks. In fact, he looks like he’s almost taunting the cops in CCTV footage from the local train station, where he goes in the middle of the night, then leaves.

Terry’s wife Marcy (Julianne Nicholson) immediately calls their lawyer Howie Saloman (Bill Camp), who threatens Ralph and the DA, Kenneth Hayes (Michael Esper) with blowing this case out to the media. He also dispatches his PI to find evidence that Terry was, indeed, at a conference the day the murder occurred. The PI digs up video evidence, and Ralph finds fingerprint evidence that Terry was in the hotel… but it’s also in the van where the boy’s blood.

Even if the DNA swab matches the blood they found at the scene, Ralph has no idea how to account for the appearance that Terry was in two places at once. When his wife Jeannie (Mare Winningham) asks Ralph what he feels in his gut, he says, “I don’t know.”

Our Take: The Outsider, written by Richard Price (Ransom), was adapted from Stephen King’s novel, and Price and Bateman are among the show’s executive producers. Bateman directed the first two episodes, using a distant, brooding style that amps up the tension everyone in this small town is feeling around the case of the dead and mutilated 11-year-old.

The first episode does a fantastic job of setting up this confounding mystery, which doesn’t hesitate to delve into the more gruesome aspects of the crime. Yes, you recoil at seeing a bloody and mutilated boy’s body on screen, but it’s there to fuel your own fear and anger, and get you just as enraged and confused as Ralph is that the seemingly airtight case he has against Terry might still be full of holes. “If Terry Maitland is innocent,” he tells Hayes, “Then we’re not done. How badly do you want to win?” He wants to find the right person, whether that’s Terry or not. And as we get through that first episode, he becomes increasingly conflicted that he has the right guy.

But the heinousness of the crime envelops everything in the series. It affects the victim’s family so deeply that they suffer a second tragedy in short order. Saloman is working to make sure Terry is acquitted, but all the evidence that’s coming out likely will shake his resolve, as well. Ralph is angry because he doesn’t want anyone to go through what he went through in losing a child. And even Terry is affected, constantly threatened in the county lockup by inmates who don’t take kindly to serial killers.

Bateman’s performance shows Terry as so squeaky clean, it’s creepy. His younger daughter Jessa (Scarlett Juniper Bloom) continues to see visions after her father gets arrested, and we’re not sure if they’re ghosts or something else. So there may be something to the idea that Terry is a brutal child killer. But Bateman’s direction is also designed to make the viewer uneasy, with long, lingering distance shots, often shot through windows or doors. He’s doing this to set a template of putting the viewer at a remove from the action, making them unsure of just which side to fall on. That uneasiness is what’s going to drive our interest in the rest of the six-part series.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: In the county lockup, Terry is alone in a cell, by his request because he knows he’s going to be threatened. In the middle of the night, he hears “Hey, child killer…” It’s the voice of one of the other inmates, telling him that he’s a dead man once he gets back from his arraignment.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to both Winningham and Nicholson, who are in thankless roles as wives who are there to support their complicated husbands while working through their own complex emotions. We also have yet to see Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney, who will investigate the murder for both sides using somewhat unorthodox means.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Terry tells the guard that he can’t go into the holding cell with the other threatening inmates, the guard says, “I say you were born to go in there.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Outsider is a mystery wrapped in a psychological thriller wrapped in a gruesome narrative, with great performances and a style that purposely makes a viewer squirm.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Outsider On HBO Go

Stream The Outsider On HBO NOW