After a protracted awards season, Andrew Garfield—and everyone else—has earned a little downtime, but he’ll get very little of it, as hisnext project, drama seriesUnder the Banner of Heaven, debuts on Hulu in four weeks. A new trailer was released this week, and the first trailer was fine, but this one is a marked improvement on the visual front, with some really nice late-dusk cinematography and a less muddy overall look. It’s the early 80s, so everything is still avocado green and sh-t brown, but besides the era-appropriate awful home décor, this has noticeably warmer tones and the daytime stuff doesn’t look like it was shot through a muddy lens. Please, PLEASE let us be done with the era of dramatic TV looking like it was filmed through dirty lenses and under half-dimmed lights.
The marketing remains focused on the Lafferty murders that took place in 1984, probably because that’s the true crime hook to grab audiences, but this trailer maybe hints that the show is going to trace some of the 19th century history of the Mormon faith that Jon Krakauer covered in his book of the same name. That line, “I don’t go digging in the past,” might be a tip in that direction. This was the central tenet of Krakauer’s book, connecting violence in the past to the violence that exploded at the Lafferty home in 1984. The book was not well received by the Mormon community, it’s going to be so interesting if the show fares any better on that front.
Back to Andrew Garfield, though.Heavenpremieres on April 28, just one month before the eligibility cutoff for the Emmy this year. There is a MOUNTAIN of television to sift through, but recency bias is real, and if I learned anything during awards season, it’s that Garfield’s peers love him. Can he translate that goodwill into back-to-back Oscar and Emmy nominations?
