Review of '56 Days'

My wife and I just binged 56 Days on Amazon Prime. Aside from the title, I thought that this was one wild, sometimes winsome, sometimes weird, multifaceted gem of a thrilling whodunnit series, with two separate complex intersecting stories that jump back and forth from the present to the past.

One story is about the couple who have some kind of a close proximity to a body found in their apartment, no doubt murdered and turned into a chemical soup in a bathtub. The initial question here is who in this couple murdered whom.

[And there will be at least one spoiler ahead ... ]

I began to think pretty soon that the soup could be of both of their bodies, or a third person's body altogether (and that turned out to be what it was).

The other story was of the two detectives investigating the crime, an older, savvy but somewhat disillusioned burned out guy and his younger woman partner. She's having an uncomfortable affair with a suspect (in another case), who gives her presents but doesn't take kindly to her efforts to end that relationship.

And romantic love in surprising places and its power to overcome all kinds of obstacles is one of the central underlying themes of 56 Days. This heat animates the couple associated with the human soup in all sorts of surprising ways. Indeed, a story of love rearing its head and holding its own and calling the shots in all kinds of unlikely situations is one of the most attractive parts of this series.

Kudos to creators Karyn Usher and Lisa Zwerling (known for such pathbreaking series as ER, and notable single season science fiction series Flashforward and The Event) and Avan Joglia and Dove Cameron as the couple in the apartment, and Karla Souza and Dorian Missick as the detective partners. I've seen none of these actors before, but all four gave very memorable performances in 56 Days.

Another notable thing in this steamy series is the nudity we see. Back in the 1960s, that was de rigueur in a story like this, at least in the movies. Nowadays, the most we usually get is black underwear. But in a story like this, in which the romantic love is palpably fueled by erotic desire, we need a little more (or, depending how you look at it, a little less).

Now, I said at the top of this review that I didn't care for the title, and it was indeed the unexpected emotional juice of the narrative, the palpable power of love, that I thought deserved a more evocative title than just a random number of days. The action flipping back and forth from the present to a fluctuating x number of days in the past is of course what generated the 56 Days title, but that narrative form would have worked just as well with any title. I know that the series is based on a 2021 novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Howard (which I haven't read), but a streaming series that bears some resemblance to You and the movie Body Heat deserves a name at least as good as those.

In fact, You as a title is not even that good. Body Heat is fine. But the point is the number of days as a title is lackluster. And flashing the number of days on the screen (prior to 56, which is the present), over and over again, became tedious, and for me at least, distracted from the story. A simple "Present" and "Past" would have worked much better, and would have slided us into the story without needing to do any math.