FX/Hulu’s big play for Emmy glory in this incredibly crowded season is an adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s excellent 2003 book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a historical analysis of the history of Mormonism in this country framed alongside a dissection of a brutal murder case from 1984 in the state of Utah. While the book had the context of the history of the origin of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints and how it got twisted into the mindset of the fundamentalist sect of Mormonism that pushed Ron and Dan Lafferty to commit brutal murder, the show feels at the beginning like it wants badly to be more “True Detective” and less Ken Burns, improving in the third and fourth episodes as it becomes more about a broken community than a specific murder. Still, it’s a program that sometimes gets lost between its ideas—awkwardly jamming flashbacks to the foundation of this faith into a story that feels like it desperately wants to be an edgy crime drama. Luckily, a stellar ensemble holds the project together, but it’s also yet another one of those multi-episode series that takes what could have been a brilliant 120-minute movie and stretches it into a season. It’s becoming an epidemic.
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Directed by David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”) and Courtney Hunt (“Frozen River”)—a later episode will also be directed by Isabel Sandoval (“Lingua Franca”)—and written by Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), “Under the Banner of Heaven” stars Oscar nominee and everyone’s favorite Spider-Man Andrew Garfield as Detective Jeb Pyre, called one night to a crime scene that would change his life forever. On July 24, 1984, someone brutally murdered Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter Erica. “Under the Banner of Heaven” opens with that murder, filling in character details on Pyre as he investigates and flashing back to both the life of Brenda Lafferty and the LDS church in general.
Pyre is married to Rebecca (a wasted Adelaide Clemens of “Rectify”) with daughters of his own, and he too is a member of the church, turning “Under the Banner of Heaven” into another story of a man whose faith is shaken by seeing the darker side of that in which he believes. He also cares for his mother Josie (Sandra Seacat), who is suffering from dementia. That Pyre is surrounded by women in his home offsets him against the details of a case and a history of a religion that isn’t exactly sympathetic to the notions of gender equality.
A fictional construct to tie the two halves of the book together, Pyre investigates the case with his partner, the non-Mormon Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham), which means heavy interrogation of Brenda’s husband Allen (Billy Howle), naturally an initial suspect in the brutal slayings. Through flashbacks, the writers reveal how Allen Lafferty was a part of a family called “The Kennedys of Utah,” dominated by brothers Ron (Sam Worthington) and Dan (Wyatt Russell). After the latter became the head of the Lafferty clan, he started to revert to extreme aspects of the church, including believing that his business shouldn’t have to pay taxes. He butted heads with the more progressive Brenda (Daisy Edgar-Jones), leaving Allen caught in the middle, while the less-favorite son Ron looked on. Denise Gough, Rory Culkin, Seth Numrich, and Chloe Pirrie also play branches of this increasingly rotten family tree while the imposing Christopher Heyerdahl plays the brutal patriarch Ammon.
There are a lot of interrogation scenes in “Under the Banner of Heaven” that slowly fill in details of the Lafferty legacy with the occasional historical anecdote to allow for context that doesn’t feel natural and rarely provides the intended depth. It leads to flashbacks of Joseph Smith (Andrew Burnap) in the 1820s, but the writing never confidently ties these halves together, making them often feel like an unnecessary diversion. It might have worked to do a single flashback episode to provide the big picture context but they often derail momentum.
More accomplished are the flashbacks to how the descent of the Lafferty family under Dan’s increasingly unhinged leadership led to the tragic murders. It’s admirable that “Under the Banner of Heaven” becomes less and less of a whodunit and more of a whydunit—trying to unpack how blind faith can lead to tragedy. The writing allows conversations of principle and faith to linger much longer than true crime fans may be expecting. It can lead to a glacial pace at the beginning, but that room to breathe pays off in subsequent episodes when it becomes clearer that this isn’t a show like “True Detective” but more like Black’s “Big Love”—it’s a program that works better when considered as drama more than mystery/thriller.
One of the reasons for that is the ensemble, led by an always-effective Garfield, who almost works best here in Pyre’s silent moments, whether it’s the way he gathers himself at the unimaginable crime scene or considers how something that Allen just said about faith applies to him as well. Howle is sometimes reduced to a storyteller, recounting his family history from a police station, but he’s an effective actor who always seems present in every scene in a way that adds essential veracity to dialogue that can sometimes feel a bit too on-the-nose. Russell arguably steals the show with the richest, scariest part, leaning into the side of his on-screen presence that has always felt a bit dangerous. He’s captivating. Birmingham, Edgar-Jones, Worthington—there’s not a bad performance in this bunch.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons it’s easy to dream of the movie version of this tale, one that guts most of the history lesson and yet still finds a way to place the Lafferty nightmare against a backdrop of demented fundamentalism. The thrust of “Under the Banner of Heaven” is the suggestion that those who kill in the name of faith are following a line that can be traced back to the origin of that faith. It’s a daring concept for a weekly drama and the show gets stronger when one disconnects from the mystery aspect of the set-up to see the bigger picture. Even if parts of that picture are fuzzy while others are over-developed, it’s an admirably ambitious effort from everyone involved. [B-]