For all the sunshine and al fresco dining that summer brings, one thing the season famously does not offer is good television. No, the months of June through to September are something of a dry spell for any channel surfer looking for a spot of quality telly – which is why the arrival of the searing new thriller Furious on Disney+ could not have come sooner.
The eight-part series, dropping weekly until the end of August, is a dark and dangerous delight. It’s said to be inspired by the 1987 movie Black Widow, but surpasses its source material from the get go; in fact, they are really only similar in the broadest strokes. Like that movie, Furious is the exhilarating story of a cat-and-mouse game played between a female FBI agent (Emmy Rossum) and a female serial killer (Lola Petticrew). Unlike its source material, however, our killer’s motivations are not financial. They are moral. They are virtuous. They are, at the very least, sympathetic.
Certainly as a viewer you feel that way after learning that Catherine’s targets are all men who had been, in some way or form, involved in her trafficking and sexual abuse as a child. The cat, or mouse depending how you look at it, is newbie FBI agent Alice Black – incidentally, the most FBI agent-sounding name there ever was. Alice has plenty of demons of her own. It’s something that has become a trope of cop thrillers such as this one, but here it feels not only warranted but carefully thought through.
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Admittedly, I did turn on Furious on a weekday evening not expecting much beyond a momentary thrill. The trailer, which pulled focus on Catherine’s candy-coloured clothes and array of fabulous wigs, looked a little derivative of Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman and as such felt a little passé, a little #girlboss – but what I found was so much more interesting, a simple set-up that belies a story of depth and complexity.
While the show revolves ostensibly around Catherine’s kill list, ticked off as satisfactorily as though she were on a Tesco run, creator Elizabeth Merriweather casts her net of shame much wider than that. Starting first and foremost with the FBI and the police force, where agents and cops are disinterested in gendered violence, and some perpetuate it themselves.
We learn that Alice suffers from PTSD over a violent relationship with her cop ex-boyfriend (Jake Lacy on despicable form). The show goes further still, pulling in a Jeffrey Epstein-like billionaire who seems to be the missing piece connecting Catherine’s targets (he also has the initials JE). Perhaps more of an indictment on society than anything else in the show is a singular question that Catherine asks in episode five: “What’s the punishment for people who know what’s happening and do nothing?”
Of course, Merriweather knows how to write a compelling female lead. She got her break as the showrunner of the hit sitcom New Girl, evolving Zooey Deschanel’s main character way past her Manic Pixie Dream Girl origins. More recently, Merriweather gave us the glorious Dying for Sex with Michelle Williams, and The Dropout in which Amanda Seyfried took on the vocal fry and turtleneck of disgraced tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes. Like those shows, this one too is bolstered by a superb lead performance from Petticrew.
The actor became a cause célèbre over their performance as an IRA activist in Say Nothing, and has since lived up to that hype, turning in an understated and powerful performance in Channel 4’s Trespasses. They are also earning early raves for their role in the yet-to-be-released but much talked about I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. In Furious, Petticrew gives just the right amount of shading to Catherine, careful to leave just enough blank space at the edges. Right when you think you have a handle on who she is, she pivots. This is a character who might’ve ended up a stereotype in less capable hands: a hot, young vigilante on a murder spree. But this show has other goals in mind. And whatever victory Catherine achieves, it will be a pyrrhic one.
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Furious is not interested in tidy conclusions or cardboard cutout characters. Catherine does not carry out her murders like a cold, unfeeling machine; she is self-doubting in moments, fingers trembling. At one point, Alice confesses to her mentor, the passionate but jaded FBI agent Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) that she asks her hooks-ups to hit her. “You think I’ve never asked someone to smack me around a little in the throes of a passionate embrace?” Nora responds, to Alice’s surprise. “You think I’ve never let someone take a few whacks at this piñata?”
The show doesn’t shy away from dark corners. After Catherine drugs one of her targets – a wealthy, middle-aged lawyer played by Rob Delaney – to the point of incapacitation, she coaxes him to repeat a phrase that had helped her when she was being abused: “I’m not here.” It turns out he had been one of the men who paid to have sex with Catherine when she was 15; his sobbed protests that he didn’t know her age are met with stony silence.
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about female rage, a cultural concept that got a huge PR boost after Taylor Swift shouted it out at her Eras tour last year. Safe to say, female rage has changed a lot since film scholar Lindley Hanlon coined the term in her 1983 essay. It has been hollowed out and pinkwashed to oblivion, used to promote blockbuster films and monetize TikTok videos. Furious gives back some of its bite.
