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To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. This wonderful series — wrapping up its run with its new season — understands the South in a way TV rarely does. One afternoon shortly after actor Aden Young had wrapped season one of Rectify , his wife called. She wanted to know if he was okay. In the deeply emotional Sundance family drama, Young plays Daniel Holden, a newly exonerated death row inmate who re-enters society after nearly two decades in prison.
I was absolutely fine. I was healthy. My kids were healthy. I had a beautiful wife. For the first time in my career, I think, I even managed to pay off one of the credit cards. It all hurts, and if you move, it will hurt more. I was afraid to turn my head. It sounds weird, I know — like the kind of mystical mumbo jumbo actors sometimes tell reporters to make themselves sound profound.
Is this show — which essentially nobody but TV critics watched — going to leave a footprint? Will it matter? Yes, I would say. The series is a vital piece of art, because it presents a world TV often forgets, and it does so with beauty, bittersweetness, and humility. Yes, The Wire was little watched while on the air, but after it ended, more and more people watched it, became obsessed with it, and turned it into the enduring TV classic it was always meant to be.
For Spencer, that comparison point makes sense in terms of long tail viewership. She is, she tells me, still receiving tweets from people who are just noticing her work in a string of Mad Men episodes from But it struck me in another way, too: Like The Wire , which dug into the systemic failures of the American city, Rectify travels to a place TV rarely travels to, to examine people in crisis.
Only in this case, that place is a small town in the South, and many of its residents would likely turn up on other TV shows as goofy rednecks — as stereotypes, more or less. Rectify is both interested in exploring why those stereotypes exist and in poking at them a little bit to see just how real they are at their core.
The series takes place in a world of extreme empathy — where it attempts to understand the motivations of each and every character, no matter how difficult that might be. We're all insecure. We're all afraid of losing what we love. These things that make up Teddy, I think they live in everyone. Ray's not afraid to explore those feelings. I wanted Ray and Walt to be my bullshit detectors and make sure I was doing it right. They cast the great actor Hal Halbrook to play Abner Meecham, and the film went on to snag best-of-show awards at film festivals all over the country.
He gave me the confidence to keep pressing on. Ray believes in having multiple sets of eyes. Things move too fast in television. Every episode must come in at exactly 44 minutes. In practice, that means there is no room for the actors to improvise on a "Rectify" script. Everything's there. All the thoughts, all the feelings. You read it three or four times and you've got it memorized.
Where the actors have their greatest effect on the show is in their interpretations of the action lines the writers give them between sections of dialogue. Watch the scene described above, in which the character Daniel Holden prepares to dress for the free world after 19 years on death row. The guest director is interpreting the script. I ask McKinnon how he feels about violating the screenwriting maxims about how to write action lines.
Who made that rule up? I think if it helps you understand the story better and makes it a more compelling story, then you do whatever you do. I think it's all in the execution. For me, when I was trying to understand these characters as I wrote them, that's just the way it kind of came out.
I wasn't really concerned with what people's expectations were. I was more concerned with both my trying to understand this journey and also articulate how I felt about it, and how these characters felt about themselves.
The character is definitely more convicted than I am, and saw things more black-and-white than I do. This is something that I was feeling, and the fact that it's resonated in the way that it has with others is mentally gratifying beyond anything that I ever would have thought.
That the setting is rendered with such grace, realism and respect just flows naturally from the storyteller. Ray McKinnon is of the South, yes, but his storytelling is of the whole world. And his show, therefore, has become a kind of living, breathing monument to the duality of the Southern thing. In that tent on the day I visited the set, I watched McKinnon and Teems stage the final shot on the riverbank.
They take as much care with the visual details as they do with the words. Watching the monitor, I watched Bridgers move almost imperceptibly to his right, and I marveled silently at how that one tiny repositioning changed the feel of what I was watching. McKinnon called cut. Features Perspectives Folklore Videos Podcast.
For the sake of the story. For the love of the South. Story by Chuck Reece. Ray McKinnon works in a tent. The goal, as Ms. And for 50 years, I never saw it happen.
Then, two years ago, it did. But for us at The Bitter Southerner, it raises an even bigger question we often grapple with ourselves: Can a Southern artist today present his culture truly and with respect, its good and its bad, and still tell a story people all over the country and around the world can identify with?
As soon as "Rectify" premiered in the summer of , it drew critical raves. At 18 years old, Daniel was sentenced to die. He has spent over 19 years on Death Row. Top review. Best new drama of This is un doutably the best new drama of , I know the year isn't even half over as yet, but I really doubt any other show can beat this, in fact I'm not even sure if returning series could compete with this. In 6 episodes this show manages to take you to a depth which a lot of others fail to achieve in their entire run.
The show is just so amazingly well done that 1 is almost tempted to label it as "flawless", although I understand that that might be a bit much. Right from the 1st episode you realise that each scene, each dialogue and each silence, is pregnant with meaning, a meaning that slowly takes you deeper into this word and these characters.
The characters are all complex in their own way, although that might not be obvious at 1st, and as the show unfolds you start to see different sides of them which slowly emerge out adding shape to their personalities. Daniel, of course is the most interesting character of all, and after the 6 episode season you perhaps know him no more than you did when you started. The show also presents a wonderful portrait of small town, rural American life.
Not just in the settings and locations but also in the social environments, the beliefs and prejudices of the people who live there. To sum up, this is an absolutely brilliant new show, and if you like through provoking, philosophical, intense dramas, then this is the show for you.
FAQ 1. Why has the show been voted on by users before it has been aired? Details Edit. Release date April 22, United States. United States. Griffin, Georgia, USA. Gran Via Productions Zip Works. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour. Related news.
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