Shining Girls

'Shining Girls' Season 1 premiere recap: Find out what happens in Episode 1 of Elisabeth Moss' Apple TV Plus dramatic thriller.

Out of sorts, Kirby thinks to check her wallet, where her driver’s license informs her that she now lives in Apartment 3N, not 2B. Her key works in the lock for 3N, and Grendel is back to being a cat. In fact, someone else is living in her apartment, and he doesn’t know what Kirby is talking about when she says that she and her mother live there. She notices a red umbrella lying on the edge of the roof, but no one else seems to be up there. When Kirby happens to see some of Dan’s notes at work, she gets the address of the main suspect and visits him with a knife in her hand. All she has to go on is the sound of his voice, which she remembers from “when he called me a whore.” All she counsels is that Kirby change her plans to move south: “If you want to stop feeling this way, you better figure it out right here.” Nothing is where it should be, and I don’t recognize it anymore.” Small changes become bigger, she elaborates, but her mother either doesn’t want to or can’t truly hear what Kirby is saying. She runs out of the house and runs into Dan, who takes her to a diner and tries to discern why she wants to poach his story. and his ID tag reads “Grendel.” She writes in her journal, “Grendel is my dog.” (If you’re confused, don’t worry — you’re supposed to be.) We soon learn that Kirby lives in Chicago with her mother (played by Private Practice‘s Amy Brenneman), she works at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper as an archivist, and she’s about to move to Florida. Years later, a woman we’ll come to learn is named Kirby Mizrachi (played by The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Elisabeth Moss) is in an apartment, writing in a journal. But the Apple TV+ thriller based on Lauren Beukes’ novel quickly establishes that a normal life will prove elusive: Adding insult to literal injury, the years since Kirby’s assault have brought on shifts in her reality.

There have been so many serial killer thrillers on television that writers are running of ways to keep the genre fresh. Enter “Shining Girls,” a new Apple ...

I just worry that with the incredibly crowded state of the medium, people may not have the patience for a show that starts as slowly as this one. And I have to say that everything about the show gains momentum at the end of episode four, which features one of the best closing scenes of the year. If there’s a problem with “Shining Girls,” and it’s kind of a big problem, this is yet another one of those projects that I wish was made a decade ago as a feature film. Harper is the kind of serial killer who doesn’t hide in the shadows—he openly stalks his victims with a confidence that borders on Christian Bale in “ American Psycho.” There’s something in his choice of accent and almost charming delivery that’s chilling. “Shining Girls” is a thematic treasure trove in how it unpacks the reality-shifted impact of trauma and Moss is more than up to the challenge of a tough role like this one. And what about the matchbook found in Kirby from a place that doesn’t exist ... yet.

Or simple terrorisers of women. But I would urge, even if that is your current position, to give Shining Girls (Apple TV+) a try, though the premise may be ...

One constant is that she is always a newspaper archivist with the Sun Times (her story, which is more central than in the book, is set in early 90s Chicago), the closest she could manage to her ambition of becoming a reporter in the wake of the life-changing assault. Sometimes the alterations are small and a pet cat is now a pet dog, or she returns to a different desk at work; sometimes they are large and she finds her hot mess of a mother reborn in a more literal sense than usual as an evangelical Christian, or that Kirby herself is now married to a man called Marcus instead of still isolated and single. But I would urge, even if that is your current position, to give Shining Girls (Apple TV+) a try, though the premise may be unalluring.

The actress and executive producer of the Apple TV+ limited series also discusses the show's influences and what was unique about making it.

Right now, most things I do, I am a producer on because I tend to be involved in such a deep way that it doesn’t make sense for me not to be a producer on them. Imagine nobody is there that was there before or if you look entirely different when you look in the mirror? Thompson: With Shining Girls, you had the scripts, you had the book, but when it came to additional research, did you talk to journalists? I felt like I was experiencing it from the audience’s perspective. It was a lot of Se7en, a lot of those 70s voyeuristic films too, like Klute and The Parallax View, there’s a bit of Spotlight and All The President’s Men sprinkled in, so we had very specific visual references, but Fincher tonally was very prevalent in setting up the show. I’m really glad that I had that experience because, from the get-go, I felt like I was in the audience’s chair.