56 Days, on Prime Video

Catherine Ryan Howard’s novel was not just another unreliable narrator thriller. It had two unreliable narrators. The supporting characters were not exactly dependable either. Much was withheld from each shift of perspective. That is always harder to translate to the screen, but some, like Fincher’s Gone Girl, pulled it off quite dexterously. In this case, we will regularly flashback to when Ciara Wyse met Oliver Kennedy, in search of clues as to which one of them is the shapeless body decomposed to near-nothingness in the bathtub by household solvents. Their brief affair was passionate, but both ignore plenty of red flags in co-creators Karyn Usher & Lisa Zwerling’s 8-eepisode 56 Days, based on Howard’s novel and executive-produced by James Wan, which is now streaming on Prime Video.

Kennedy and Wyse meet cute in a Boston hipster market—except was it really so random? Kennedy seems to have the financial stability Wyse craves, while she offers the emotional support he needs. They seem perfect for each other during the first episode, until the final cliffhanger revelations.

Obviously, we will learn more over time, but Kenndy apparently has a notoriously violent past, which has left him an erratic and somewhat paranoid basket case. Oliver has assumed an alias (ironically, he chose the surname of a notorious clan of wealthy womanizers, whose infidelities have also led to fatal tragedy), while maintaining contact with his headshrinker.

As for Wyse, it turns out she engineered their “chance” meeting. Basically, that means she was stalking him. Wyse (not her real name either) is keenly aware of “Kennedy’s” past. In fact, she has a family score to settle.

So, who became the ooze in Kennedy’s bathtub? That is the question Detectives Lee Reardon and Karl Connolly must answer. They work together well, but their private lives are a mess. Currently, Connolly is in the doghouse with their Captain, because his random Tinder hook-up found his gun and posted suggestive photos posing with it. Unfortunately, Connolly is still more together than his partner, whose personal improprieties threaten to derail their investigation and her career.

Frankly, 56 Days is like two very different shows spliced together. Reardon and Connolly’s slightly degenerate buddy cop procedural work is consistently entertaining and often dryly droll. Karla Souza (in a role much like her scene-stealing performance in El Presidente) and Dorian Missick have great chemistry verbally sparring and playing off each other.

However, the him-or-her storyline focusing on Wyse and Kennedy features plenty of sex, but not lot of common sense. Yet, the greatest cardinal sin of their fractured arc is the way Usher, Zwerling, and their battery of co-writers answer the central mystery far too early. As a result, halfway through the seventh episode, viewers find themselves watching and waiting for Reardon and Connolly to catch up with the rest of us.

Avan Jogia also seems badly miscast as “Kennedy.” Admittedly, he can be convincingly neurotic and entitled, but he lacks the sort of dangerous presence this series requires. In contrast, a supporting character is right when she suggests Dove Cameron’s “Wyse” has “crazy eyes.” Indeed, Cameron has an unnerving presence that might redeem her storyline, or at least come close.

Therefore, 56 Days feels unbalanced, devoting more time to its less successful timeline. Yet, the parts that work are quite memorable. It is the sort of series best enjoyed with a heavy hand on the fast forward button, but that necessarily entails the risk of missing a crucial bit of explanatory context. As a result, the series frustrates as much as it intrigues (its not Gone Girl), so consider yourself forewarned, now that 56 Days has started streaming on Prime Video.