'I Am the Night' review: Chris Pine stands out in this pulpy miniseries

Chris Pine stars in and is executive producer on TNT's six-part series "I Am the Night." Credit: TNT/Clay Enos
SERIES “I Am the Night”
WHEN | WHERE Previews Sunday at 10 p.m. on TBS and TNT. Premieres Monday at 9 p.m. on TNT.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT Jay Singletary (Chris Pine, "Wonder Woman," "Star Trek Beyond") is a struggling newspaper reporter in 1965 Los Angeles who's looking for a buck and a scoop. Finally, the break: An old sensational story about a sinister gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel (Jefferson Mays), may be heating up again. Meanwhile, out in Sparks, Nevada, a teenage Fauna (India Eisley, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"), learns of her improbable ties to this old story. Fauna, who believes she is of mixed race, also learns that her true parentage may not be what she was always told.
This six-hour miniseries, directed by Patty Jenkins of "Monster" and "Wonder Woman," is based on the memoir "One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel." The real-life Dr. George Hodel — who died in 1999 — was considered by the LAPD a suspect in the so-called Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short who was found dismembered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of L.A. on Jan. 15, 1947.
MY SAY The Black Dahlia murder case has inspired first-rate fiction (James Ellroy's 1987 novel), second-rate movies (Brian De Palma's 2006 misfire) and plenty of documentaries of indeterminate quality. With its appetite for everything, what took peak TV so long to discover this? The stars almost certainly had to align, or at least the schedules — of Pine and Jenkins. In interviews, Jenkins -- who directed the first two episodes -- has said she wanted to tackle this before the "Wonder Woman" sequel, but it was apparently Pine and his fictionalized character that finally sold TNT on the project.
In Jay Singletary, Jenkins created a fractured Korean War vet suffering from PTSD with a ferocious drug dependency and hair-trigger temper. Desolate but also determined to get himself back on track as a journalist, he's asked by another perp in the back of a squad car -- where he seems to spend a considerable amount of time -- "Why are you here?"
"Trying too hard, not trying hard enough," he says. "It's hard to tell."
Nice line, and nice performance, too, by Pine in the opening episode. There are other good ones, notably by Eisley whose Fauna grows in determination and stature, and by Golden Brooks (Maya of "Girlfriends") who plays her boozy, intemperate mom, Jimmy Lee. Meanwhile, Jenkins has embraced something altogether unique in "I Am the Night." An African American perspective. Imagine that? Or at least imagine it in noir fiction, which for the better part of 75 years has usually told only the story of white hard-boiled detectives, white dirty cops, and white femme fatales. "I Am the Night" even potentially has a black heroine in Fauna. She (and you) will learn about her true racial provenance in a later episode but in the meantime she has to toggle between worlds — one of white privilege, the other of black subjugation and 1960s-era racism.
That's what's good about "I Am the Night." What is not so good is familiar, at least to viewers of these sprawling peak TV miniseries -- the story starts off strong and then slowly, inexorably slips into a narrative coma. ("True Detective" as the latest example). Six hours is a big canvas while "I Am the Night" doesn't make the case that it has enough paint, or story, to fill it. In lieu of forward momentum, there are the usual temporizing tricks — the flashback, the red herring that leads nowhere, the anti-hero back story that's like every other anti-hero back story in the long history of anti-herodom.
A case here of trying too hard or not hard enough? That's easy to tell: Both.
BOTTOM LINE Good performances, strong start, but the pulp and cliches eventually take over.
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