Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Under The Banner Of Heaven’ On FX On Hulu, Where Andrew Garfield Investigates A Ritualistic Double Murder In The LDS Community

The Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) has been the topic of a number of scripted series and docuseries over the past 10-15 years, much of it questioning just how some of its policies and traditions came to be and who they actually benefit. In 2003, Jon Krakauer wrote Under The Banner Of Heaven, a nonfiction book that couches the LDS church’s history in the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter Erica. Almost 20 years later, it’s been adapted into a scripted series.

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Clouds. Waving grass. Closeups of bugs. Then a shot of a small town and a modern church.

The Gist: Detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), who works in the police department of a Salt Lake City suburb, is called to the scene of a gruesome double murder: Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her 15 month old daughter Erica. Pyre knows the Lafferty family as an influential one in the LDS church; there was a time when his family and the Lafftertys went to the same branch for services.

Pyre brings in Brenda’s husband Allen (Billy Howle), who was across the street from his house, covered in blood. As Pyre and his partner, Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham), who recently came over from Las Vegas, question Allen, thinking he’s the prime suspect. But Allen tells a tale of how “men in beards” corrupted his family, to the point where his “testimony” wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been. Pyre, who isn’t LDS, thinks he sees through what he thinks is mumbo-jumbo, but Pyre, who is a devout LDS member, is more concerned that Allen’s shaken faith is what led to the murders. It’s also odd that Allen can’t seem to give any location info on any of his brothers.

Brenda, who was from Idaho, never fit in with the Laffertys, and Allen suspects both his brothers Ron (Sam Worthington) and Dan (Wyatt Russell) mistrusted Brenda while simultaneously being attracted to her. When Pyre’s wife Rebecca (Adelaide Clemens) finds an address for Allen’s brother Robin (Seth Numrich), Taba goes to his house and finds that Robin and his family have skipped out of town. When he’s located, he runs from the motel room he and his family are holed up in; he is growing a copious beard.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though it’s about a different case, all of the ritualistic language used in the first episode of Under The Banner Of Heaven reminds us of what we saw in the docuseries Murder Among The Mormons, crossed with Big Love.

Our Take: Under The Banner Of Heaven was adapted by Dustin Lance Black (Milk) from Jon Krakauer’s true-crime nonfiction book of the same name. In the Lafferty case, which took place in 1984, Dan and Ron were eventually convicted of the double murder; the two of them said they did it to fulfill a heavenly mission. So the six-episode scripted series will show how Pyre and Taba wound their way to bringing the two Laffertys to justice.

The first episode, though, is a confusing mishmash of a traditional police procedural/murder mystery, a treatise on blind faith and how that can corrupt, and a history lesson on how LDS founder Joseph Smith listened to his “heavenly father” when it came time to find his wife at the tender age of 15.

It took multiple viewings of interrogation scenes where Allen was being questioned by Pyre and Taba to really understand where Allen was going as he seemed to spew phrases from the Book of Mormon or other sacred texts instead of actually answering the detectives’ questions. He’s trying to tell him that there were forces at play that conspired to drive other members of his family to murder his wife and daughter, but the detectives — especially the grizzled Taba — were having none of it.

But this is where the interesting aspect of the series comes in. Because Garfield’s character is devout LDS, he not only has insight into how the church operates and how families treat members that stray from the church, but also can see past the black-and-white aspects of a case. All along, he tells Taba that there may be more at play than just a domestic murder, while Taba’s experience tells him that the most obvious conclusion is the correct one.

That insight from Pyre, and how this case may either shake his faith or reinforce it, is where this series will likely have its best moments. Garfield is more than capable of carrying off this conflict; we can see it in the first episode, as he tries to be a steel-eyed police detective while at the same time praying for himself, the victim, the suspect, and the families. He’s looking for divine guidance, and we’re going to see if he thinks he gets any, and what might happen if he doesn’t.

But, given that the first episode also has scenes of young Joseph and Emma Smith, it feels like we’re going to get flashbacks to the LDS church’s early days as some sort of reference text. It doesn’t feel like it’s all that necessary, because even though we don’t know the ins and outs of the LDS church, we understand issues of faith and why people question a faith that used to be unshakable. Concentrating on that would make for a much less muddled series, and it’s something we hope we see in the coming episodes.

Sex and Skin: Rebecca gets naked to join her husband Jeb in the shower after he gets home from bringing in Robin Lafferty.

Parting Shot: As Rebecca embraces her questioning husband, Taba, still at the motel where they found Robin, spies a truck watching him from across the parking lot.

Sleeper Star: Daisy Edgar-Jones’s scenes as Brenda are all in flashbacks, but her presence is undeniable, especially the way her very being seems to deeply disrupt the peace in the Lafferty family, though it’s a peace that’s actually not all that peaceful.

Most Pilot-y Line: Ron tells his gathered family, who is going to clear rocks from a neighbor’s field to help save it from the feds, “No one pees until we clear this entire field.” Woah, those Mormons, they like to live on the edge, don’t they?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not sure if the main themes of Under The Banner Of Heaven are going to continue to be obscured by side trips into Mormon history, but we think that when the show is focused on the murder and the issues of faith it brings up, it’s at its most compelling.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.