Best Of 2022: Best dramatic adaptations
Plus: this meeting of the Arthur Bell Appreciation Society will now come to order
the true crime that's worth your time
Welcome back to our “best of 2022”/“state of the genre” coverage! We asked an esteemed panel of colleagues and contributors for the best (and…the rest) in true-crime properties for 2022; the true crime they look forward to in 2023; vintage gems and underrated treasures they discovered; and their big-picture takes on the genre.
Yesterday, we talked about 2022’s best documentary properties. Now it’s on to the year’s outstanding dramatic adaptations of true-crime cases.
Tara Ariano, TV critic and co-host of Listen To Sassy: “The Dropout! HBO Max's The Staircase was good too.”
David Bushman, author of Murder At Teal’s Pond: “The Dropout! Although I really, really loved Under the Banner of Heaven as well.”
Sarah Carradine, co-host of Crime Seen: “Candy.”
Mark Blankenship, author of The Lost Songs Project and Reviews Editor at Primetimer: “No question, it was Under the Banner of Heaven on FX. That last episode, particularly when Gil Birmingham finally loses his patience with Andrew Garfield's self-pitying Mormon shtick, was thrilling.”
Sarah Weinman, author of Scoundrel and New York Times crime-fiction columnist: “The Dropout. Especially since I didn't expect to like it at all and felt like it was a retread.”
Toby Ball, host of Strange Arrivals and co-host of Crime Writers On…: “I really liked Candy. Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey were both great.”
Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University: “There’s no shortage of great adaptations this year: Apple TV+ had Black Bird about Jimmy Keene; Starz had Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell in Gaslit. But nothing was as absorbing as Andrew Garfield in FX’s adaptation of Under The Banner Of Heaven.
The seven-part series was controversial for what was perceived to be a negative view of Mormonism, and for deviating from the facts of the case (Garfield plays a fictional detective), and there’s a case to be made that’s disqualifying. I’d argue, however, that the Jon Krakauer book was much more about the tension between religion and civil society, and about the contortions a society has to go through to try and serve both religion and justice. In that sense, the series does a remarkable job of highlighting the real tensions.
Every dramatization, from a few seconds on Unsolved Mysteries (which has been pretty good, somehow?) to longform recreations like this one are going to change details, merge characters, invent conversations: the question is the extent to which they do so, how this changes our interpretation of the case, and how open the filmmakers are about those changes. In this case, each episode starts with a disclaimer that this is a fictionalization, but presents the underlying truths of the case, and the society that gave rise to it, better than a straight adaptation would have.”
All great choices, and it’s nice to see Black Bird get a couple of mentions. Not surprised our panel didn’t hat-tip The Good Nurse, but I’ll do so here, if only because I appreciated the creative team’s decision to get the job done in two hours. I’ll also mention I Am DB Cooper here since it’s a hybrid that doesn’t quite belong in the documentary section — and it was the re-enactments that made that one sing.
But if I had to pick just one? The Dropout. A commanding, but not surprising, performance from Seyfried that I hope cements her as a top-tier performer, which she’s been for 20 years IMO.
Let us know if we missed anything, should have talked more about ACS or Dahmer, etc. and so on! — SDB
We don’t only pay attention to headlines about true crime; we hear the chatter about a brutal recession. We also see streaming-sub price hikes in our inboxes more often than we’d like, so if supporting Best Evidence with a paid subscription isn’t in the cards for you right now, we get it.
But! We make an excellent gift; it’s just $5 a month (less if you go annual!); and there’s literal years of paywalled content to help you and/or a loved one pass the time.
We appreciate the consideration! — SDB
I have more than one desk — predictable, given my line/s of work. Just as predictable: they’re all cluttered to the point where my to-do list contains bullets like “clear-cut ExB ship station” and “1) purchase canary 2) send canary into supply drawer to find color print crtrdg.” Which is how I purchased a copy of March 1974’s Esquire, lost it in a drift of paperwork, and could not recall once reuniting with Unfrozen Caveman Magazine why I’d bought it in the first place.
“Suddenly”? …jk jk, I don’t have kids and am good with that decizh but I don’t hate them, so why’d I buy this dang thing again? Ah, here we go: a longread from Arthur Bell on the Dean Corll case and the miasmic nightmare surrounding the parents of Corll’s victims.
If you subscribe to Esquire, you can dig into the piece here; I have one too many subscriptions on the go as it is, so I headed to Muckrack.com to see if I could dodge the paywall for you guys — and failed, but the project succeeded, net, because “Boys Next Door” author Arthur Bell had a handful of high-profile longreads a half-century ago, and most of them you can read for free.
Bell seemed to have a lane of sorts with LGBTQIA+-related cases, writing about, among other things, the murder of Knight-Ridder heir John S. Knight III; a wave of hate-crime robberies in Chelsea in 1980; and of course the bank robbery made famous by Dog Day Afternoon. Here’s a snip from the latter, which sees Bell following a tip from a friend on his “cassette phone unit,” calling the bank direct and chatting with his acquaintance John “I’m one of the robbers” Wojtowicz, then heading downtown with an NYPD escort:
I confessed it’s been a long time since Flatbush Avenue days and I didn’t know how to get to Brooklyn and it might take a while. John said, “Grab a cab. I’ll throw a few $100 bills out the window.” “Sit tight,” I said, “don’t do anything. I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” and hung up.
I then called Voice City Editor Mary Nichols at her home and explained the situation to her. Mary made a few phone calls. Twenty minutes later, Sergeant David Durk, the honest cop who testified before the Knapp Commission, and Ed Powers, another efficient cop, showed at my apartment. They were to have guested on the Barry Farber radio show that night and minutes before showtime they were called off to whizz me down to Brooklyn. I phoned John at the bank again to tell him I was on my way. He gave me the phone number of the female wife whom he had separated from, to call in case anything happened. “I’ve got news for you,” he said. “I think they’re going to give us the boot. We’re not going to walk out of here alive.
“That money, I wanted it for a sex change operation for Ernie. Now I can’t even see him to kiss him. Come here as quick as you can. Do you want to speak to a hostage?” He put on Mrs. Shirley Ball, a teller from Brooklyn.
Most of Bell’s writing is like this: a mildly tart river rushing through a series of unfortunate events. The Esquire piece, less so — it’s more preoccupied with rendering class difference — but they all have a precise grace towards both the lived experience of, and a baseline het obliviousness to, queer days and ways in seventies America.
And here’s Bell on the Easter 1972 murder of Joey Gallo; some of the rat-a-tat New-Journalism prose here is slightly antic and self-conscious, and it may not work on folks who didn’t spend any time in 20th-century Little Italy, but Bell’s writing just took me by the hand all “and then”:
I could see a sign that said Italian pastries and one that said homemade clam chowder, scungilli, calamari, and a plant with a red ribbon streaming from its green leaves — a good luck gift to Umberto’s on its opening, seven weeks before. And a couple of waiters sweeping the floor of debris and a cop with a mop.
Around the corner on Mott Street, Paramount shot the scene from The Godfather where Marlon Brando as Don Corleone was gunned down at the fruit stand. And on Grand Street, only a block a way, last week, a heist of $55,000 from Ferrara’s. Killing is met with a shrug in Little Italy, but to rob a “family” establishment on Easter Sunday, a place where you take the wife and kids, you don’t do.
I don’t know what y’all have planned for weekend true crime,
but I’ll be spending at least part of mine marinating in Bell, whom we lost in 1984 and IMO couldn’t spare. He and McAlary must have a hell of a Substack on the other side. — SDB
Next week: Best vintage true-crime discoveries of the year, biggest disappointments, and more from our esteemed panel!
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Twitter and Instagram. You can also call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.