Prime Video has a new tentpole series it’s been promoting: Scarpetta, a crime thriller starring Nicole Kidman as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a brilliant forensic pathologist who uses advanced forensic technology to solve crimes. Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis is on board as Kay’s older sister Dorothy, while Emmy winner Bobby Cannavale plays Dorothy’s husband.
It is a star-studded affair, but that doesn’t make it the best thriller in Amazon’s arsenal. There’s a twistier, more challenging series just a few clicks away.
Time for The Devil’s Hour
From (some of) the people who brought you Doctor Who
The Devil’s Hour is executive produced by Steven Moffat, who was very important to the modern revival of Doctor Who as well as the creator of hit shows like Sherlock. His fingerprints are all over The Devil’s Hour, both through the casting of one-time Doctor Peter Capaldi in a central role, and because there’s a heavy supernatural element to this show that becomes more pronounced as it goes on.
The Devil’s Hour begins by introducing us to Lucy Chambers (Jessica Raine), a social worker who lives with her mother Sylvia (Barbara Marten) and son Isaac (Benjamin Chivers), both of whom are on the strange side. They’ll see things that aren’t there, hear voices, and generally unsettle people. Lucy has issues, too; she finds herself waking up every morning at 3:33 a.m., the devil’s hour, with the vague feeling that something is wrong.
Elsewhere, we follow a police detective (Nikesh Patel) investigating a string of murders that seem to be linked to a prisoner named Gideon Shepherd (Capaldi). How can he be involved in this series of seemingly unrelated killings if he’s locked up, and what is the connection between him and Lucy?
The first season of The Devil’s Hour is long on eerie mystery, and makes excellent use of Capaldi’s ability to be at once aggressively sinister and very likable. To explain the full appeal of the show, we’re going to have to get into some spoilers, but only enough to give you an idea of what you’re missing if you don’t try this show out.
The Devil’s Hour is a timey-wimey good watch
Like the Netflix show Dark, but more British
It is eventually revealed that Gideon is a man stuck in a time loop where he relives his life over and over, each time remembering everything that happened before. He is potentially thousands of years old, a conceit you’ll believe after Capaldi fixes you with one of his wild-eyed stares. Gideon has decided to use his seemingly eternal time on Earth going after criminals, which is how he knows so much about what’s happening to them in the outside world even as he’s in prison. He can “remember the future,” and has been working for lifetimes to make sure it’s as safe and crime-free as possible.
That makes him a hero, technically, although his methods can be brutal and his meddling with the flow of time causes all kinds of unexpected consequences. I won’t spoil the specifics, but all the strange things that Lucy and her family experience can be explained by anomalies in the fabric of time. And the show does explain everything, or try to. The Devil’s Hour is a puzzle box show where part of the fun is figuring out how everything works, what’s related to what, which version of the character we know is talking right now, and so on. It recalls other mind-bending series like Dark or Severance, with enough gallows humor thrown in to break up the bleakness.
We’ve already talked about how much Peter Capaldi brings to the show, but Jessica Raine deserves just as much credit. As Lucy, she’s our eyes and ears in this world, and she does a fantastic job of selling us on what a strange experience this is for her. We learn about the show’s mythology as she does, and seeing her piece it all together helps us do the same.
The Devil’s Hour is a well-written genre mashup
And the end is in sight
We also root for Lucy because we want the best for her and her son Isaac, who’s caught in the middle of all this. Isaac’s role grows more important in the second season, which is less mysterious than the first (we already know the basics of the mythology by this point) but has a more straightforward (and ultimately more satisfying) plot.
In season 2, Lucy and Gideon team up to stop a deadly bombing at a toy store, something that Gideon has tried and failed to prevent in many of his other lives. The second season ended in a way that suggests some fascinating possibilities as to the identity of the bomber, and a third and final season of The Devil’s Hour has already been filmed and is due out sometime next year. Since the first two seasons were written so tightly, we can expect that this last one will wrap everything up in a satisfying way.
It’s all happening on Prime Video
If you want a great binge, start with these finished Netflix shows
These 10 Netflix TV shows will delight you from start to finish.
The first season of The Devil’s Hour is six episodes long and the second only five, so it’s not a show that will take you an eternity to finish. But if you do and more, there are plenty of other terrific Prime Video originals to check out, including the up-and-coming crime series Cross and the iconoclastic superhero show The Boys, which is about to wrap up with a climactic fifth season.
- Release Date
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October 28, 2022
- Directors
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Johnny Allan, Isabelle Sieb, Shaun James Grant
- Writers
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Tom Moran
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Jessica Raine
Lucy Chambers
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Peter Capaldi
Gideon Shepherd
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Nikesh Patel
DI Ravi Dhillon
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Benjamin Chivers
Isaac Stephens
