'American Crime' tackles a different story
Felicity Huffman, Regina King and others return in new roles as ABCs anthology drama returns Wednesday.
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AMERICAN CRIME.
10 p.m. Wednesday, 6ABC.
A photograph of a high school student named Taylor Blaine (Connor Jessup, "Falling Skies"), apparently inebriated and in his underwear, finds its way into dozens of teens' smartphones in the Season 2 premiere of ABC's anthologized drama "American Crime" tomorrow night.
And, ever so slowly, all hell begins to break loose.
The story of one boy's public humiliation - followed by an allegation that he had been drugged and raped at a party - may seem at first like a strange follow-up to the grisly murder and sexual assault at the center of Season 1, but this season of one of network television's best shows, is, like the first, about much more than a single criminal act.
Different as the stories and settings are, they're tied together by creator John Ridley's willingness to zoom in on the divisions within communities that may look homogenous from a distance.
Besides allowing complicated stories to be told in a single season, anthologies may function like repertory companies, as FX's "American Horror Story" does. In this case, Season 1 stars Felicity Huffman, Timothy Hutton and Regina King are among a number of actors returning in different roles for Season 2.
It's one of the rewards of a diverse TV landscape that race alone is less likely to define the boundaries of any single character's experiences, and in "American Crime," privilege is more about income than race, even if race is never forgotten.
(FX has another coming anthology series, the too similarly titled "American Crime Story," that could be making a similar point in its first season look at "The People v. O.J. Simpson," especially when contrasted to the story of impoverished defendant Steve Avery in Netflix's "Making a Murderer.")
King, whose busy 2015 included a starring role in HBO's "The Leftovers" as well as the role of the defendant's Muslim sister in "American Crime," this time plays Terri LaCroix, a high-powered executive whose son Kevin (Trevor Jackson) may be implicated in the growing scandal at his private high school.
She and her husband, Michael (André Benjamin), have resources that Taylor's mother, Anne (Lili Taylor, another "Crime" veteran), whose son attends the school on scholarship, can't even begin to imagine, and they won't be afraid to use them.
Huffman, whose unflinching performance as a grieving mother and embittered racist was one of last year's strongest, gets a higher gloss this season but is no less tough as the private school headmistress whose job is to make Taylor's case go away.
Hutton's the basketball coach who may be about to learn the limits of team spirit, and Elvis Nolasco, who played the accused Carter Nix last season, returns as a principal to whose public high school Taylor eventually flees.
Ridley ("12 Years a Slave"), who wrote and directed the season premiere, isn't afraid to take his time with these people or their stories. You shouldn't be, either.
New tonight *
"Killing Fields"
(10 p.m., Discovery). The network's first true-crime series comes from Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, whose "Homicide: Life on the Street" was one of the best network cop shows ever.
This show's ongoing exploration of a 1997 cold case in Louisiana that may or may not be related to dozens of unsolved killings or disappearances could be a next stop for "Serial" fans or anyone who's just finished binge-watching Netflix's "Making a Murderer." I wish, though, that I could detect a bit more of its producers' pedigree in tonight's episode, the first of six.
* "The Shannara Chronicles" (10 p.m., MTV). Lots of people - including my satellite engineer brother-in-law - are looking forward to this adaptation of the Terry Brooks future-set fantasy series. I wouldn't think of spoiling their fun just because I'm elf-challenged. It's very pretty but feels like something aimed at harder-core fantasy fans, or at least at those who've read the books.
* "Zoe Ever After" (10 p.m., BET). This multi-camera sitcom stars Brandy Norwood as a newly divorced mother trying to start over while co-parenting an 8-year-old with her famous boxer ex (Dorian Missick).
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