Prime Video Mystery Thriller Intrigues

The dating landscape is precarious at best. Therefore, when connection and attraction are mutual, they can create a frenzied, destructive obsession. Based on Catherine Ryan Howard’s best-selling novel of the same name and adapted for television by Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher, Prime Video’s latest thriller “56 Days” is an engaging series about revenge, secrets and the magic of electric chemistry. While some of the twists are more obvious than others, the show thrives because the audience never quite knows what to expect.

“56 Days” begins at the end of the story, the day a body is discovered. A masked figure is seen entering apartment 11 in a luxury complex in Boston. Rotten flowers sit wilting in a vase, the fireplace is lit, and clothes are strewn around. However, the bathroom reveals what’s occurred here: Soaking in a tub full of fluid is a decaying corpse. The masked figure snaps a photo of the corpse before slipping out of the unit and pulling the fire alarm. From there, the show rewinds to Day 1.

Viewers are introduced to Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron), a young woman who has just recently moved to the city. After exiting her modest, termite-infested studio apartment, she heads to the grocery store with her frayed NASA tote bag in hand. In the store, she bumps into Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a hotshot, monied architect who is immediately enamored of the mesmerizing brunette. The couple’s steamy courtship ignites with Space Shuttle banter, cocktails and a blazing sexual chemistry. Yet, as the audience discovers, both Ciara and Oliver have secrets they are desperate to keep hidden from one another.

After the fire alarm goes off, Detective Lee Reardon (Karla Souza) and her partner, Detective Karl Connolly (Dorian Missick), are called to the crime scene. Unfortunately, their investigation isn’t cut-and-dry. Apartment 11 is registered to a company, and despite the horrific smell seeping into the halls, it takes some time to obtain a warrant.  Moreover, the body in the bathtub is completely unidentifiable. As the pair confer with forensics and begin piecing things together, the detectives learn that the unit was once home to Oliver and his live-in girlfriend, Ciara. But whoever lies rotting in the bathtub is anyone’s guess.

​Over the course of eight episodes, “56 Days” moves back and forth between the past and the present. More information regarding Ciara and Oliver’s hedonistic, erotic relationship and their respective pasts is revealed. Though debonair on the outside, Oliver is a man riddled with anxiety — desperate to outrun a past he can’t erase. Conversely, Ciara appears innocent and naive at first, especially compared to her hot-tempered older sister Shyla (Megan Peta Hill). But it soon becomes clear she has come to Boston for a particular reason, and she won’t rest until she gets exactly what she came for.

“56 Days” is engaging because of the eerie mystery at its center and the narrative’s ability to develop alongside the ever-bending timeline. The show captures the frenzy of all-consuming lust and the chaos that arises in the wake of a blazing hot relationship without true depth or knowledge of the other partner. Additionally, the series examines the fortunes of privilege and how second, third and fourth chances (and lives) can be brought as long as the right amount of money is on the table. Additionally, “56 Days” explores how childhood experiences can alter the course of your life, imprison your mind, arrest foundational development and foster fixations and paranoia. Though several incidents border on the preposterous, especially in the fifth episode, “Chapter 5,” which chronicles the couple’s 32nd day together, the plot always finds a way to pull the viewer back in just as they begin to scoff in disbelief.

​In the end, “56 Days” is a wild ride that shifts drastically as Oliver and Ciara’s story unfolds, leading toward the conclusion of their romance. The final reveal isn’t as shocking as Netflix’s “His & Hers” or as sinister as Prime Video’s “The Girlfriend.” Yet, when it does crack open for the audience and Detectives Reardon and Connolly, it’s an ending that even the most engaged viewer won’t likely predict.

All eight episodes of “56 Days” premiere Feb. 18 on Prime Video.