Review: 'The Bridge' on FX, Haunting, powerful, extraordinary.

By Anne Brodie Jul 8, 2013, 22:07 GMT

Haunting, powerful, extraordinary. Elwood Reid and Meredith Stiehm bring us The Bridge, an FX dramatic series that not only features interesting, creatively grisly murders, it also examines real life issues like difficult relations between US and Mexican law enforcement in jurisdictional battles over crimes that span the border.

FX's The Bridge
New Crime Drama Debuts July 10 at 10 p.m. on FX Canada and Wednesday, July 10 at 10 PM on FX (USA).
Starring Diane Kruger, Demián Bichir, Ted Levine.

The series introduces us to a fascinating and strong lead character, the troubled but brilliant Detective Sonya North played by Diane Kruger.

The debut episode finds us on the bridge between El Paso and Juarez, where a woman has been founded murdered. When officials pick her body up, it falls to the ground in perfectly cut pieces. Not only that, further investigation reveals that the lower half is actually two people’s legs in one pair of jeans. Turns out the woman was an American judge known for her anti-immigration policies.

North arrives on the scene same time as Chihuahua State Police, Marco Ruiz (Bichir). These are polar opposites in character and motive; she's by the books, a stickler for rules to the exclusion of common decency in this situation. Show producers say she suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a kind of autism that makes it difficult for her to communicate or socialise properly.

She is locked inside her own head and not so good at telling victims family’s that their beloved has been murdered. The woman’s husband orders her out of the house after she asks one too many questions in an inappropriate, insensitive manner. She has a history of upsetting people.

North’ boss, the long suffering Lieutenant Hank Wade (Levine) reminds her to make eye contact with people and to try to think from their point of view. He is one of the few people who understand her disability and recognises her intellectual skill in crime solving. He reminds her not to change her top in their office after she pulls off her shirt and sniffs her underarms. She marches to the sound of her own beat.

Meanwhile Ruiz, her detective colleague from Chihuahua seems to have an intuitive and empathetic understanding of her difficulties. He’s a good cop in a place overrun by drug cartels and corruption in the police ranks, he has a home life compared to Cross’ isolation.

The discovery of the body on the bridge episode is just the beginning of what I hope will be a long running series. It has the outside the box brilliance of cable television, unhampered by the lowest common denominator proviso of network fare and a cast of extremely talented actors.

Demián Bichir is a veteran Mexican actor who was nominated for his remarkableperformance in A Better life. Ted Levine, who played the monstrous Jamie Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs, has a long list of film and TV credits. Kruger the award winning German actress and model has an impressive body of work and played Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, in Troy.

Kruger is the latest major actress to move to cable television, following Jessica Lange, Vera Farmiga, Laura Linney and others. It’s a smart move. At 38, she gets to work on a character and story over time and work regularly, less vulnerable to the changing tides in film. And what a part she picked in Detective Sonya North.

Must see series.