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Diane Haithman is contributing to Deadline’s TCA coverage.
At today’s TCA panel on the new Sundance Channel drama Rectify, creator/director/writer Ray McKinnon refused to be pinned down about the trajectory or the ending of the story of Daniel Holden (Aden Young), suddenly released from prison after 19 years on Death Row.
“I wrote the show a few years before The Killing came out. I thought, why do we wrongly convict people?” McKinnon said. “We want to have closure as human beings in our storytelling, we want to have closure. I’m not sure I want to abide by those conventions. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” Executive producer Mark Johnson also declined to reveal whether or not the show would have a conventional “ending.”
Related: Sundance Channel Greenlights Unscripted Series About TV Writers
McKinnon also said that viewers cannot assume Daniel Holden’s innocence or guilt. “Daniel is not a protagonist in the black and white sense. There are times when you think he could have done that [his crime]. It is not a whodunit. After 19 years on Death Row, the tension comes from: Who is Daniel Holden?”
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The usual Sundance narcissism; the only reason to have any curiosity about Daniel Holden at all is to determine whether he committed a crime or not. Our criminal justice system is invested in convicting those who are guilty to assuage the grievance of victims, not to explore the psychological needs of criminals. All the rest is the usual abstractionism masquerading as intellectualism.
Anyone who cares about the wrongfully imprisoned should check out the story of Ryan Ferguson, 8 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit – and 32 more to go (Ryan is just 28 years old) Not a shred of evidence to hold him – no DNA, motive, criminal background or witnesses.
Ryan’s story has been extensively covered on NBC Dateline and CBS 48 Hours and yet he still remains in prison. It’s staggering how slow moving and corrupt the justice system is.
There’s a Facebook page dedicated to Ryan and a petition at Change.org – if any celebrities want to get involved please message @remotepatrolled for more details.
This series sounds like it mirrors the life of Damien Echols. How many West Memphis Three series are in the works?
I sort of assumed this show would be about Daniel’s struggle to regain normality after being freed for a crime he didn’t commit and the issues that come around with the people in his life who’ve moved on past him and those who still think he’s guilty and all those problems. I didn’t really think they were going to touch upon the “mystery” of who did it as strongly as the killing touched upon the “Who Killed Her” storyline as its A Story (though, I did expect the whodunnit element to overshadow the series — possibly something that would overshadow it in a way similar to that of “How I Met Your Mother” and the mother). Either way, I’m interested to see how Sundance handles its first scripted series… if this is a hit (even if it’s a mild one) it could pave the way for more quality programming on an emerging network.
Agreed. Think about what it must do your head to *know* you’re going to live the rest of your life in prison — that you’ll only ever get out the front door in a coffin. To live with that for decades, until you really believe it. And then, when you’ve given up all hope, you’re thrust back into the world, where everyone thinks you still belong behind bars. There’s plenty of story there, whether they ever get around to solving the original mystery.