'Tell Me Your Secrets' review: Atmospheric, twisty mystery

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: This mystery series stars Lily Rabe as Emma Hall, the girlfriend of a convicted serial killer, Amy Brenneman as Mary Barlow, a mom who believes her missing daughter was a victim of the killer and Hamish Linklater as John Tyler, a predator himself who is trying to live on the straight and narrow but gets swept up into Barlow's orbit.

The 10-episode "Tell Me Your Secrets," created by Harriet Warner (best known for writing for the BBC's "Call the Midwife") and now streaming on Amazon Prime, draws heavily on its Louisiana bayou setting and the Gothic atmospherics therein to provide texture to the twisty plot.

MY SAY Over the course of a viewing of the first two episodes of "Tell Me Your Secrets," what becomes most apparent is that this is a series designed to be binged. The cliffhangers propel you from one episode to the next, and a whole lot of questions are raised that simply cannot be easily answered.

It's a credit to Warner and Lily Rabe that even though there's no clear sense of who Emma Hall is — we know about her problematic past, we know she can't remember anything and that she has come to Louisiana to start over — there's enough offered to compel a continued commitment.

A whole lot happens to Emma at the beginning of this series, including at least one shocking death, and Rabe plays it all with a perfect mixture of anguish, confusion and strength.

It's not at all clear that any of this will amount to anything more than a disposable mystery, ultimately, but there's never anything less than a sense that everything that's happening is impacting a real person who is struggling to start over.

"Tell Me Your Secrets" begins with a flashback wherein Brenneman's Mary confronts Emma in a jailhouse showdown, demanding information on her missing daughter, and signs point toward a significant looming confrontation after Mary hires Linklater's John to track Emma down in hiding.

In a series that gives equal weight to the three characters, there's simply not enough initially to make Mary's quest for answers anywhere near as compelling as Emma's own journey. Brenneman sticks to the same basic note of stubborn resolve over the course of the first two episodes, and there's nothing offered to shake up the reality that her whole storyline is tired and overused.

Linklater fares better, giving an unsettling edge to his character's calm, meticulous mannerisms that offers a vibrant picture of a man trying desperately to submerge his worst impulses.

The series works best when it begins to unpack a complicated cerebral picture populated by characters engaged in what may be an ultimately hopeless quest to come to terms with a dark past and begin things anew.

When "Tell Me Your Secrets" reverts to Louisiana cliches and starts dredging up hints that supernatural forces might be afoot, the creator and her directors lose a bit of the most compelling thread.

There's a lot going on here, in other words, and the key to whether the series will work for 10 hours has everything to do with how its makers manage this excess. If it's streamlined enough for the characters to shine through, there's a lot of promise. If it becomes engulfed in showing off some flashy imagery without those psychological underpinnings, it'll lose steam quickly.

BOTTOM LINE The first two parts of "Tell Me Your Secrets" are certainly engaging in a potboiler sense, but it's not at all clear that its makers can keep it up for 10 episodes.