Mormon murder drama ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ is riveting
nypost.comon Hulu (even though it hails from FX) and based on the nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer (“Into The Wild,”) “Under the Banner of Heaven” is set in 1984 Utah and follows Mormon family man Detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) as he investigates the murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones, “Normal People”) and her baby daughter.
The grisly crime shakes up the pious small-town community where most of the cops haven’t even seen a dead body.Spoiler alert: the culprits are Brenda’s brothers-in-law, Ron (Sam Worthington, “Avatar”) and Dan Lafferty (Wyatt Russell), who murdered her for “God told me to do it” reasons.
The Laffertys, as the show explains, were big fish in this small pond, like a Utah version of the Kennedys.Jeb and his partner, Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham, “Yellowstone”) – a Native American from Las Vegas who’s an outsider in this community – are a fictional invention for the show, and they’re one of several smart decisions that “Under the Banner of Heaven” makes.By making Bill an outsider, the writers are able to explain some aspects of Mormons and their culture that are unfamiliar to viewers.
And, since Jeb is a man of faith, they’re also able to view the Mormon church not from a place of gawking, but of sensitivity, as Jeb is forced to examine his own community.
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