But the talent lineup producing HBOsSharp Objectsis definably prestigious.
The limited series (debuting Sunday at 9 p.m.
ET) stars Amy Adams, five-time Oscar nominee and blue-eyed avatar of the modern human condition.
She plays ambiguous protagonist Camille Preaker.
The show is created and co-written by Marti Noxon, suddenly omnipresent between this andDietland.
And its adapted from a book by Gillian Flynn, who also serves as a co-writer.
Together, these fine people have produced the scuzziest, sweatiest, booziest drama of the summer.
Shes an old-school journalist, a drinker with a writing problem.
A reporter in St. Louis, Camille is sent on an assignment that requires a personal touch.
Its not a happy homecoming.
Vallee overlaps flashbacks and maybe-hallucinations over Camilles arrival.
The implications are bleak.
We get snippets of Young Camille (Sophia Lillis), memories of nightmare events ending dreamy innocence.
Lillis looks so much like a young Adams that you suspect either time travel or cloning.
The cast of characters awaiting Camille is right out of a Broadway melodrama, or a locked-room mystery.
Her mom is a matriarch of the High Southern tradition.
Adams gives a great performance, strong even when its dissolving.
Adora has the fainting charms of a comic-strip Southern Belle.
She tends to wear Edenic sundresses, the chromatic polar opposite of Camilles black-on-blackest scar-covering wardrobe.
In the middle of these two in the middle of everything, really is Amma.
Scanlen is the discovery of the summer.
Amma has at least two faces, a sweetly devoted daughter whos also a debaucherous skater kid.
Her knack for shapeshifting suggests multiple interpretations of her relationships with Adora and Camille.
Theres also a stepfather (Henry Czerny) enraptured with his sound system, a monument to paternal impotence.
Little touches communicate addictive world-building.
Vickerys office has a window-unit air conditioner, which he constantly turns to for respite from the heat.
Camille visits a local bar, a neon-lit dive as comfortable as theBig Little Lieswharf cafe.
But the series has a midseason problem, a getting-the-hell-to-the-point problem.
Certain evocative images get repetitive from misuse.
Its a stunning visual, nostalgically Americana and insidious all at once.
In the premiere, there are a couple of prime suspects for the murders.
And for the vast majority ofSharp Objects, they arethesuspects.
This is by design.
Its a holistic mystery, less about the dark act than the society that led to the dark act.
The history of Wind Gap is wild, and the bleak mood ofSharp Objectscould inspire some chatter.
(Theres a point where everyone seems guilty of something.)
But the middle episodes meander.
Whos got the time?
The haunted, swooning mood ofSharp Objectsworks on me, though.
Any scene with some combination of Adams, Clarkson, and Scanlen is marvelous.
And Messinas at Peak Messina here, gruff and tough and somehow the most naive person on screen.
