Long Bright River Review: Compelling Murder Mystery

Peacock’s Long Bright River is a gritty, compelling murder mystery and family drama examining the effects of addiction and the love between sisters.

With its heavy, serious tone, the series is an intense, passionate, somewhat frightening look at the dangerous world of drugs and murder, the effects of addiction on a person, a family, and a city, and the complicated relationship between two sisters. Long Bright River is both gritty and compelling as a family drama and a tense murder mystery.

Based on the book of the same name by Liz Moore, Long Bright River tells the story of two sisters mixed up in Philadelphia’s opioid crisis. Mickey Fitzpatrick (Amanda Seyfried, of The Crowded Room) is a patrol officer whose main beat is a poverty-stricken neighborhood hit hard by the epidemic. Her sister is a drug addict who soon becomes a missing drug addict. And when a series of murders start occurring in the Kensington neighborhood, per the synopsis, Mickey realizes that her personal history might be related to the case… and boy is it ever.

While the narrative seems to be focused on solving these murders, it’s centered around Mickey’s regret, love, and search for her sister. The sisters were once close throughout their troubled childhoods—very close—but that began to change as the girls grew up and made choices that put space between them. Kacey fell into addiction as a youngster, and years later, when she relapsed after a year of being clean, she had to forgo living with her sister per their agreement. But when she tries to come home and begs to be let in, Mickey makes a choice that alters their relationship forever and calls the cops on her sister. So, through the whole series, she’s carrying this enormous weight of guilt for making that choice, and others, as you’ll see, because the action it led to was not worth it. 

Mickey is our star here. She’s a cop who looks out for the addicts and sex workers, she’s a mom trying to take care of her son, she’s a sister trying to locate and protect her sister, and she’s trying to be a better friend to her former partner. Not only is she a great cop, but she carries an empathetic quality most do not. She genuinely cares about the addicts and sex workers on the streets, and why shouldn’t she? She grew up with and went to school with most of them, and they had hopes and dreams just like Mickey did. No one ever plans to become an addict. It just happens, and when it does, it clears the way for a powerful tornado to tear through and obliterate everything and everyone in its path.

Because of this, Mickey carries some post-traumatic stress, which we find out extends much farther back into her life than we realized, and the portrayal of such effects is something Seyfried portrays with high quality. Her performance here in Long Bright River is comparable to her performance in The Crowded Room, as both characters are powerful female roles faced with harrowing situations at work and at home, struggling with their own pasts as they work to come to terms with moving on in the present.

Long Bright River is well written and moves at a pace that keeps you hooked from beginning to end, but it does play out across a 20-year timeline, so we are jumping back and forth. But don’t worry; these time jumps are more memories establishing a foundation than they are key plot points to know and remember in our storyline. And while we do have multiple subplots floating around, the series does a solid job of staying focused on the main plot, which is Mickey finding her sister (and subsequently, this serial killer running around). 

One thing about the series that really stood out to me was the method used to reinforce the importance of making smart choices: music. Mickey is a musician at heart, a prodigy on the English horn. As such, she listens to a lot of classical music and frequently exposes her son to it to teach him life lessons. For example, she uses an opera that’s the story of Faust and how he made a deal with the devil and everything for him changed to teach her son about the importance of making good choices. 

In addition to Seyfried, Nicholas Pinnock (The Assessment) also stars in Long Bright River as Mickey’s former partner Truman, and he’s another character to which we become attached. He’s a good guy, but again, this is about choices and effects, and Truman isn’t without his fair share of poor choices. Additionally, Ashleigh Cummings, of NOS4A2, stars as Mickey’s sister Kacey, Callum Vinson, of Chucky, stars as Mickey’s son Thomas, and John Doman, of The Boys, stars as Mickey’s grandfather. All are series regulars. Recurring guest stars are Patch Darragh, of Succession, as the police sergeant, Dash Mihok, of Ray Donovan, as Mickey’s new patrol partner and fellow cop, and Harriet Sansom Harris, of The Agency, as Mickey’s landlord and neighbor. Each gives a solid, believable performance that only ropes us into the story and our characters on an even deeper level.

Overall, Long Bright River is an evoking murder mystery and family drama worth the watch. It offers up a gritty, heartfelt look at the state of our reality today and at the dangers lurking inside and outside of family comfort and safety. It’s a reminder that addiction is not selective nor is love. Neither are things we can turn on and off like a light switch. Furthermore, it’s about human suffering and bringing awareness to the fact that a) suffering exists, b) it is prevalent, and c) it’s overlooked, minimized, and ignored.

An action-driven tale that renders the deep, suffocating sadness of seeing someone you know and love continuously and hungrily plunge themselves into oblivion, Long Bright River serves as a sobering picture of how addicts and addiction are received by others. The real story here, though, is about the love between sisters and the ugly side effects of addiction as well as the importance of carrying empathy for others.

Long Bright River will be available to stream on Peacock in the US and Canada, and on Peacock via Sky TV or Now’s Entertainment membership in the UK, from March 13, 2025.