Get Millie Black is HBO’s latest hyper-specific whodunit
Like Mare Of Easttown, this miniseries heightens its lukewarm mystery with talented acting and an immersive setting.
As much as it’s famous for cursing, nudity, and dragons, HBO is also known for a certain kind of prestige crime thriller. Whether it’s 2023’s Full Circle, 2021’s Mare Of Easttown, or 2018’s Sharp Objects—the latter an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name—the formula is thus: A horrible crime happens in a corner of the world that has a hyper-specific demographic with its own unique speech patterns and codes. A heroine tasked with saving the day has sordid connections to that community, a lot of family drama shoved into her mental closet space, and absolutely no work-life balance. The crime, and the guilty party, are usually fairly predictable after a few episodes. But the acting is often sensational.
Enter Get Millie Black. An HBO partnership with Channel 4 in the U.K., where it will air next year, the five-part miniseries stars Shakespearean-versed theater actor Tamara Lawrance as the titular unflinching and dogged gumshoe Millie-Jean Black. A former Scotland Yard detective, Millie’s latest case sends her somewhere she’d vowed never to go: her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. There, Millie cannot hide the fact that her dedication to finding a missing kid runs just as deep as her emotional wounds from a childhood filled with abuse. Perhaps saving this one will bring about the absolution she craves from the ghosts of those she could not rescue?
Like with a lot of the other shows, Millie is also saddled with the dead weight of a partner she does not want, an outsider to this community whose presence is severely stressing out her trust issues. In this case, it’s Game Of Thrones alum Joe Dempsie’s Luke Holborn, an investigator with his own complications who has an ingenious way of doing things. Soon, Millie’s need to pull at one string unravels a whole sweater of the city’s corrupt underbelly. Unfortunately, this is not that elaborate of a scheme, and the plot that unspools is probably just as audiences first expect it to.