John Ridley’s American Crime has upended the TV crime drama

Crime shows have long been a staple of the American TV diet, but ABC’s new drama American Crime is unlike any that has come before it in an important way. It’s not a procedural — none of the major characters are police, prosecutors, CSI technicians or detectives. Instead, the focus stays on one crime, and the families of the victim and the accused during the entire 11-episode season.

The show came about after ABC approached John Ridley, a screenwriter with a long and diverse portfolio that included a stint with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, several novels and penning screenplays for movies like "Undercover Brother," "Red Tails" and the  Jimi Hendrix biopic, "Jimi." Most notably, last year he won an Oscar for his screenplay for "12 Years a Slave."

While ABC initially wanted to do a more traditional, trial-based show, Ridley convinced the network to go in a different direction.

“I came back to them and I pitched to them the concept of doing it through the eyes of, as you said, the families of the victims, the families of the accused,” he said. “Not about the police or the prosecutors or the judicial system in terms of that being the central focus of it, but people caught up in something and trying to find a way to navigate, probably the most desperate situation that you could ever have, that you get a phone call that either your loved one has been the victim of a violent crime or has been accused of being the perpetrator.”

Taking this approach allowed Ridley to escape the troupes normally associated with the TV crime genre. No wise-cracking cops or over-worked prosecutors here. The characters are complex, flawed and, notably for a network TV show, not always likable.

This holds true for one of the show’s more memorably characters, Barb Hanlon, the mother of the murder victim, played by Felicity Huffman. Hanon, a white woman, often speaks in ways that are racist or intolerant. She calls a hispanic suspect an  “illegal,” and uses the suggestive phrase “those people,” to refer to her son’s murderers, two examples noted by Slate’s Wila Paskin. Yet, in other ways, Hanon is still a sympathetic character.

“It was my desire with her character, with all characters, to not make them straw people. Barb, as a character, is someone, as you say, is in defensive mode because she's had to be defensive in her life,” Ridley said. “She was left alone by her husband, who was a gambler. She grew up in a project, a white mother, as she says, with her two white children, who was, quite frankly, a minority in her space. So again, she's a character that, as with all of these characters, may say things that individuals like myself may disagree with, but there are other people that I honestly, truly hope will look at her and go, 'Well, she is coming from a place, and she does have a right to say that, and she has lived through something.'"  

Because of its setting — the first season takes place in Modesto, California — and topic, the show deals indirectly with politicized issues. Race, poverty, class and immigration are unavoidable for a complex crime drama set in that city. There is even a scene where an unarmed Latino man is shot by police officers. It was filmed before the Michael Brown case but nonetheless, seems timely. While the context is politcal, Ridley didn’t set out to “send a message” or pressure audiences to think one way or the other.

“When this show works, and when I think it works the best, is when you're swept up with people like Barb in moments that I hope are very beautiful and very emotional, but aren't preachy. They're just being experiential,” he said.

One thing American Crime is not, is funny. And that hasn’t stopped the critics from loving it. Paskin, at Slate, said “what it lacks in fun, it makes up for in intelligence, complexity, and boldness.” The New York Times said it was “an ABC drama that is not just good, it’s startlingly good.” Salon declared that “ABC has produced a prestige drama within the bounds of what broadcast television can do, and if it has been tooled to be more accessible than an arty crime drama on cable, it’s hard to tell how.” 

Ridley expects to get some negative reaction from American Crime too, which would be in keeping with how "12 Years a Slave" was received. He’s not one to be put off by criticism, though. He just digs deeper.

“With '12 Years a Slave' we had every possible reaction, from 'This is an amazing story' to 'It's torture porn' to 'You're racist. Why are you bringing it up?' That's to be expected, and I expect we'll get a little bit out of American crime too. But because some people may react negatively is not a reason to not explore, not to discuss, not to render as close approximation to real life as we possibly can,” Ridley said.