The first installment of the British miniseries Red Riding — 1974–is better than any film I’ve seen thus far this year. It’s a little flawed–a little too in love with impressionistic love scenes, but emphasis on me nagging when I should be crowing. Performances across the board are phenomenal, particularly a late-arriving heavy played with thick shaggy mane and thick shaggy Yorkshire accent by Sean Bean. It’s gorgeously filmed, almost impossible to tell it was television, given such rigorous attention to ’70s-influenced widescreen compositions and a showboat tracking shot or two. The story begins with and ostensibly centers on a possible serial killer, taking little girls, but that mystery is a thread through a thicket — dense social and political context, a thick ash-cloud gray-sky atmosphere, and a poisoned moral universe….
I got the UK dvd set, but I’d say this’d be very much worth catching in the theaters, as it sneaks around the country.