The true evil in “Furious” isn’t the serial killer who injects her victims with an immobilizing drug before depriving them of food and water. It’s not even the alcoholic cop who likes to beat up his girlfriend. No, the real bad guys in this fine new thriller are wealthy power players who traffic and have sex with teenage girls and pay off the right people to keep it quiet.
“Furious,” which premiered Monday on Hulu, consciously presents itself as a crime story for the Epstein age. But it’s much more than that. Elizabeth Meriwether (“Dying for Sex”) has created a series rife with thorny moral ambiguity, sticky webs of conflict, and a sneaky sense of humor that never apologizes for itself. “Furious,” loosely based on the 1987 movie “Black Widow,” understands that some subjects are grim enough to require a little gallows humor, and its characters seem to agree. They laugh to keep from crying, though they do that as well. Every episode elicits a few unexpected but genuine laughs, the kind that leave your throat before you can even question yourself.
The two storylines and the two protagonists — one a criminal, the other a cop — run along parallel tracks, and they’re haunted by the same demons, though the show lets the similarities simmer and build with satisfying patience. Catherine (Lola Petticrew, excellent here and in the 2024 Hulu drama “Say Nothing”) is the killer, but there’s nothing random about her choice of victims. They tend to be rich, spoiled men of New York privilege (one is played as such to perfection by Marblehead native Rob Delaney, who was also great in “Dying for Sex”). Soon we realize they were all in some way complicit in Catherine’s trafficking as a teen, and they’re all connected to the powerful (and dying) billionaire Jay Easton (Peter McRobbie). Easton is enabled by his own adult daughter (Hope Davis, who is finding a nice niche as an icy power player — see also “Succession” and “Perry Mason”).
Lola Petticrew and Sofia Ko in “Furious.”Sarah Shatz/Disney
Catherine‘s opposite number, and in some respects her doppelganger, is FBI Agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum). Alice doesn’t have a lot of friends. When she was with the NYPD, her longtime boyfriend and fellow cop (Jake Lacy) liked to beat her up, for which her (male) colleagues somehow blamed her. He would drag her out of the shower to batter her, and now she can’t take showers without falling apart — the kind of chilling and precise character detail at which “Furious” excels. Alice sees a pattern in the murders going around town. Eventually, she also sees a kindred spirit.
Rob Delaney in “Furious.”Disney/Sarah Shatz/Disney
Every time you think “Furious” might jump the shark, it brings everything back to character and story; the twists feel well-earned, never desperate, and the plotting is as tight as a perfectly thrown spiral. It’s a drama about a particular kind of trauma: the different types of abuse women suffer at the hands of men, and how that abuse perpetuates itself and all comes back to cycles of power. The show’s sense of moral outrage comes not in the form of sermon or sensation (though “Furious” is consistently exciting), but through carefully layered writing and performance.
Those performances start at the top — Rossum, in particular, has never been better; she and Petticrew take us through a ferocious range of emotion, and the energy is electric when they finally share the screen near the end of the series. But this cast has exceptional depth. Scoot McNairy brings gruff sympathy and bedraggled edge to the one police colleague who hasn’t turned his back on Alice (and who also happens to be in love with her). Quincy Tyler Bernstine, one of those top-tier theater actors who occasionally grace TV and movies with her presence, is wry and rueful as Alice’s de facto FBI superior and partner, a woman who has seen too much in her work investigating child pornography and subsequently drinks too much so she can forget as much as possible (and offers up much of that gallows humor). Lacy, who has often played his overgrown frat boy quality for laughs, is pure menace as Alice’s abusive ex.
Everywhere you look there’s a good actor creating a vivid character. “Furious” is packed with predators, victims, investigators, and people pulled into the maelstrom; among the standout performers are Steve Way, Campbell Scott, Rob Yang, Riley Vinson, and Danny McCarthy, all of whom leave an impression every time they appear. The musical score, by Ariel Marx, works low-end strings and trip hop beats to foreboding effect.
Quincy Tyler Bernstine in “Furious.” Sarah Shatz/Disney
Between the never-ending Epstein story and the recent arrest of the Tate brothers, the horrors of wealthy, powerful, and predatory men destroying the lives of teen girls have overflowed into the public consciousness. This relevance accounts for part of the “Furious” impact — but nowhere near all of it. The series digs deep into poisonous power dynamics and the lengths to which those in authority will go to preserve them, and it does so with an instinct for suspense that never really falters. It’s one of the best shows of the year.
FURIOUS
Starring Emmy Rossum, Lola Petticrew, Scoot McNairy, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Jake Lacy, Steve Way, Hope Davis, Peter McRobbie, Campbell Scott, Rob Yang, Riley Vinson, Danny McCarthy and Rob Delaney. Three episodes are streaming now, with new episodes premiering Mondays through Aug. 31 on Hulu.
Chris Vognar can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.
