TV Review - Big Sky (2020)

It seems like ABC wanted a pulpy noir or a crime drama and tapped David E. Kelley (The Practice and Big Little Lies) to adapt the 2013 novel by C. J. Box. It focuses on a female detective in Montana who investigates the disappearance of a pair of teenage girls. The disappearance turns out to be a kidnapping, so the focus shifts to include the perspective of the teenage girls who have been taken, as well as the perspective of the men who perpetrated the crime. The series then becomes a cat-and-mouse game to see if the detective can find the girls and stop the bad guys or if the bad guys can get away with their crimes.

When it comes to TV shows about a cat-and-mouse game between cops and criminals, particularly with female leads, this series probably won't capture the imagination like The Fall (2013) or Killing Eve (2018). It's not as pulpy or over-the-top as something like Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story (2011). Kelley's series lands somewhere in between something more acclaimed as The Fall and something less so as the Ryan Murphy program. The success of this series might also depend on one's tolerance for watching innocent girls be held hostage and tortured. I wasn't too much in the mood after seeing another series earlier this year also involving a kidnapped girl, a series that features an actress that's also in this series.

Kylie Bunbury (When They See Us and Under the Dome) stars as Cassie Dewell, a private detective who co-owns her own agency in Helena, Montana, the capital of the state. She's African-American, which I'm not sure is her race in the book. She's a single mom, but she has been having an affair with a married man. That married man is the other owner of her agency.

Ryan Phillippe (Shooter and Secrets and Lies) plays Cody Hoyt, the aforementioned married man with whom Cassie is having the affair. Despite that, he still has feelings for his wife and their teenage son. He's a former cop who seems to have gotten washed out the force, probably due to substance abuse issues. When his son's girlfriend goes missing, he immediately goes searching for her.

Katheryn Winnick (Vikings and Wu Assassins) co-stars as Jenny Hoyt, the wife to Cody. She finds out about Cody's affair with Cassie and she gets upset. She's upset not just by the affair, but also due to the fact that Cassie is her best friend and they all work together at the detective agency. She's a very tough woman. When she learns of the affair, she confronts Cassie and they get into a fight. When her son's girlfriend goes missing, she joins in the case to find her and works with Cassie, putting aside their differences.

Natalie Alyn Lind (The Goldbergs and The Gifted) also co-stars as Danielle Sullivan, the girlfriend to Jenny and Cody's son. She's driving with her sister, Grace Sullivan, played by Jade Pettyjohn (Little Fires Everywhere and School of Rock). They're driving to see Danielle's boyfriend, the son of Jenny and Cody when they get kidnapped by a trucker who is revealed to be part of a sex trafficking ring.

Jesse James Keitel plays Jerrie, a transgender sex worker who also gets kidnapped. The majority of her time is spent in captivity with Danielle and Grace. They're held hostage in a shipping container. They spend most of the time getting to know each other and trying to figure out a way to escape. Lind is an actress that was just in the CBS series, Tell Me a Story (2018). That series also featured a girl who was kidnapped and being held hostage, focusing on her attempts to escape or reckon with her captor. It's the same thing here where reckoning with their captor is a key component.

Brian Geraghty (Chicago P.D. and Boardwalk Empire) also co-stars as Ronald Pergman, the truck driver who is the kidnapper. He seems to be a delusional man who at first seems to be possibly on the spectrum of autism. He doesn't seem to socialize because of his job, but he also seems to have supreme mommy issues. He's one who's difficult to diagnose, but he seems to have some kind of psychosexual obsession with seeming heroic and he believes that his kidnapping of prostitutes and other vulnerable women is him rescuing them in his warped perception. He does prove he can be sweet and charming, if in a general creepy way.

John Carroll Lynch (American Horror Story and The Drew Carey Show) also co-stars as Rick Legarski, a Montana State Trooper. He's a highway patrol man who basically has his own station. A police station or outpost is operated solely by him on a long stretch of deserted road that is deep in the forests and woods outside Helena. It's revealed by the end of the first episode that he's in league with Ronald and is helping him with the sex trafficking ring. He seems less to suffer from a mental illness and comes off as more an immoral, right-wing fanatic. His machinations though aren't as interesting as the backwoods villains of something like Netflix's Ozark (2017).

This series got into a bit of controversy, a controversy that's arguably relevant to mention. Native American or Indigenous tribal leaders sent a letter to ABC over its lack of representation of Native American or Indigenous characters. The letter argued that the show is set in an area with a disproportionately high rate of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. It's risen to a level of being considered an epidemic. In fact, that epidemic is referred to as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls or MMIWG.

Kelley and the producers of this series could argue that they are simply being faithful to the source material. However, it's obvious that some liberties have been taken that makes the series different from the book. The race of the main character is one such difference. The death of one of the characters from the book might be another. I'm not familiar with the novel, but the inclusion in the series of a transgender character might also be a departure from the book. If they can make these character changes, then the inclusion of a Native American or Indigenous person wouldn't be beyond the scope. Montana's Constitution specifically calls out American Indians. It's reportedly the only state that does so. The title of this series is a reference to Montana's nickname. For no Native American or Indigenous person to be included here feels like a gross oversight.

Rated TV-14-VLSD.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Tuesdays at 10 PM on ABC.