This New Limited Series Tries To Reshape The True Crime Mold — But Doesn’t Quite Crack It

Hulu’s new limited series, "Under the Bridge," chronicles a tragedy — and never truly gets to the heart of who it’s about.

Writer Rebecca Godfrey is trying to persuade the family of teenager Reena Virk to speak with her for a book she’s working on.

“I figured I could give people the opportunity to know who she was,” Rebecca (Riley Keough) tells Reena’s uncle, Raj (Anoop Desai), in the third episode of “Under the Bridge,” after a memorial service for his niece. “If you talk to me, then maybe I can get some truth out there.”

At various points in the eight-episode true crime series, Rebecca continues to insist her book intends to show Reena as who she was, not just how she died. But by the end, it’s clear that Rebecca doesn’t know much about Reena. What’s worse — the show doesn’t give the audience enough to know about her either.

Hulu’s “Under the Bridge,” which adapts the nonfiction book of the same name that real-life author Rebecca Godfrey released in 2005, valiantly attempts to reshape the true crime mold. In the fall of 1997, Reena was murdered in Saanich, British Columbia, by a group of teenagers who had viciously bullied her. Her death attracted national attention in Canada.

Through flashbacks and parallel timelines, “Under the Bridge” tries to paint a fuller portrait of who Reena was before her gruesome death. Adapted by Quinn Shephard, with TV veterans Liz Tigelaar (“Little Fires Everywhere”) and Samir Mehta (“Fear the Walking Dead”) among its executive producers, the series succeeds at untangling some of the many complex social dynamics surrounding the case, approaching the story as more of a sociological study and less of a whodunit. (Godfrey, who died just weeks before the series went into production in 2022, was involved in its development as an executive producer.)