Seven Seconds is a programme that is well worth your patience. About three episodes into the 10-episode Netflix produced drama, and it is hard to know whether it is worth sticking with. It seems an incredible thing to suggest when you look back on Veena Sud’s multi-layered crime drama that has hidden depth at every turn.
The tone of the programme is heavy and intense. When compared with the likes of Bruno Heller’s The Mentalist, which draws you in with its immediate charm, it is something of a risk to leave the viewer waiting for something to happen.
While Seven Seconds, which is based on a 2013 award-winning Russian movie called The Major, was clearly immersed in quality, it was difficult to see what more of interest could follow – a leap that was well worth the effort. To contrast it to Simon Baker’s role as a psychic in The Mentalist, whereby he joins the Californian police force to help solve murders, leaning heavily on his previous experience as a psychic. From clairvoyant readings, which allow him to tell much more about the killer and victim than a normal person would, to reading people’s body language, he used his arsenal of skills to not just solve cases, but to draw in the audience.
So gritty is Seven Seconds, it does not afford the same luxury, and relies on audience loyalty to stay with it from a sluggish start. The programme is based around Brenton Butler, a black, Jersey City teenager, who is hit by Peter Jablonski (Beau Knapp), a narcotics cop who is in the process of transferring divisions. A well crafted opening sequence sets out the drama that is to follow further on down the line. Immediately there is a feeling of hidden depths in each character.
The powerful performances don’t stop there. Clare-Hope Ashitey as assistant state prosecutor K.J. Harper is swimming in self-pity and drive in a contradictory bubble of pain and a will to do the right thing. Her flawed character is drawn out with sublime skill and dexterity in a fine central role.
Regina King as Latrice Butler, mother of Brenton, is a character who goes from brimming with warmth to seething with hate. King’s performance would be done an injustice to be simply described as powerful alone. It is of such pain and love, and the battle of these emotions alone gives profound feeling to her performances.
There are no weak performances here. Michael Mosley is seasoned at this stage, but it was his recent performance in another fine Netflix production, Ozark, that caught the imagination. In Seven Seconds, as investigating detective Joe “Fish” Rinaldi delivers a performance different to that offered by anyone else in the programme.
More understated and without the same apparent depth, his character develops from a loose fit to the whole production who appears to be a bit-part player in the narrative to being at the centre of some of the finest dramatic interplays the show has to offer. Mosley’s character appears flimsy to begin with, irksome at times even. But that in itself is part of the excellence of a performance that leaves you cold, to begin with, but gradually turns up the heat to the point where he is the overlooked heartbeat of the show.
It is the strength of these performances that make you stay when an early lull seems to spark disinterest. But how big a mistake it would be, not to stick with this engaging, wholehearted beauty of a programme.
This is continued in the performances of David Lyons as Mike DiAngelo, Jablonski’s unit leader. The Australian actor and former Neighbours star is beyond convincing as a charismatic leader, seething with a fusion of passion and aggression. His darkness is underpinned by ice-cold eyes that never risks falling into cliché or self-parody.