To see the difference between turgid melodrama and tragedy, you need look no further than broadcast TV's dozen recent This Is Us knockoffs — Council of Dads, I'm looking at you — and Derek Cianfrance's adaptation of Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True.
Like the book it's based upon, Cianfrance's limited series is a tragedy of the deepest and most spiraling sort — not a pandering effort to jerk tears from the fragile viewer, but a torrent of grounded misery so unrelenting it passes from Strindberg to Shakespeare to something biblical.
The family at the center of I Know This Much Is True seems endlessly cursed but in a way that theoretically leads to revelation and maybe healing.
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