Briarpatch – Season 1 Episode 1 Recap & Review

The Bomb

Briarpatch is an artistic, interesting series, one that starts off reasonably well by easing into its plot with a couple of dramatic spikes while spending most of the time getting to know our various characters. While the murder case, so far at least, fails to really inspire that much excitement, it’s the artistry and drip-feed of information that’ll keep you coming back to this one to find out who the killer is.

We begin with a landlady named Felicity arriving at Harold’s house and demanding he pay the rent. As she steps into her car and shuts the door, a bomb goes off and engulfs the car in flames, killing her instantly.

We then skip forward to find our protagonist, Allegra Dill, returning to her hometown and staying in the hotel. There, she speaks to A.D. Singe and it turns out the landlady from the start of the episode is her sister. She worked for the local police and there’s suspicions surrounding whether this may have been financially motivated.

The next day, two officers arrive at Allegra’s door, one of them being Calvin Strucker. After offering their condolences, they talk about the murder and go over the possible motives and implications involved with it. The Captain defiantly refuses to believe Felicity was a bad cop and it’s here we learn they were soon to be wed.

The investigation continues and Allegra heads to the local bar, asking questions about the Captain with Freddie Laffter. He suspects the killer is someone with money. With zoo animals on the loose and plenty of deadpan comedic moments, Allegra continues to ask around town about what happened to her sister, before breaking into Felicity’s apartment and checking around. However, Allegra suspects that isn’t actually where she lives and questions the Chief about it, who eventually caves when Allegra threatens him.

The Chief agrees to show her Felicity’s apartment but as they’re about to head into the car, A.D. Singe arrives again and speaks a foreign language to her, seemingly knowing what’s going on. As she walks away with him, the car explodes and kills the Chief.

After getting patched up at the hospital, Allegra returns to the hotel where the tiger mentioned throughout the episode starts eating the food left outside her room which is where the first episode ends.

So far, Briarpatch has been a bit of a slow burn and right now the show could go either way. I’m sure there’s plenty of twists and turns to come but for now it’s the impressive cinematography and artistry at play here that’ll keep you coming back for more. There’s a great use of colour too and the way this blends seamlessly into the various zoom shots and clever camera angles is great to see.

Right now Briarpatch certainly has enough in the tank to make it an interesting proposition but it’s a little too early to tell which way this one will go.