Apple TV’s Shining Girls is a genre-bending crime thriller

In the past couple of months, Shining Girls has shown us, in rude and anxiety-ridden detail, exactly how life hasn't been kind to newspaper archives. She said she chose her new name because it sounded fun. Kirby's Dream Land came out that same year. I think this is the last thought I have about Kirby.

For most of the novel, Apple has improved it with some welcome changes. There is no such thing as ashining girls, at least not in the way the book talked about the specialness of murdered women. This all comes from the male villain, but still feels like an awkward example of a gender essentialist idea where women's worth is anchored to men. In her novel Afterland, Beukes' treatment of gender comes off as naive. In the case of Afterland, it was extremely harmful to already vulnerable trans women.

In the novel, the time-traveling serial killer focuses onshining girls, ordinary women with bright futures who need to die so he can keep using his powers. The powers come from a mysterious old house that allows him to pop in and out of time between the 1920s and the 1990s, and through the house, he chooses talismanic objects that are connected to the women. After being a Depression-era nobody, he becomes a time-traveling woman-murdering nobody until one of his victims, Kirby, survives. The world changes around her, not just the details of her job or her personal life, but banal tidbits from her favorite sandwich to her desk. It is a heavy-handed but mostly well-crafted exploration of trauma that extends to the characters and their relationships.

Image: Apple

The series does a better job at examining gendered violence than the novel does, not only by removing the "shining" conceit, but also by how Silka Luisa chose to change its characters. Kirby is at the center of the fluid reality that constantly changes and pushes her out of her own life. Moss delivers a reliably steely-eyed performance with strong supporting turns from the other two actors.

Jamie Bell is the real star of the show, and he plays a terrible character. Bell'sHarper is so repugnant that I can't say enough mean things about him. He is an opportunist and a grasping little rat man. When he comes back to civilian life, this new hunger never leaves him, because his whole thing of "taking what you're owed" was born out of war. He became a psychopath because of his post-war opportunism and bottomless appetite for more. He is smart enough to adapt, but too greedy to stop himself from his worst impulses.

He could be any person. Shining Girls is not an easy show for people who are familiar with this type of abuse for people who have suffered the sort of violence and mind games that breed in these grounds. Bell has dealt with violence and online stalkers and he gives off the same predatory glint that characterizes so many of these men. They can't help themselves, and they're doing it because they can. They don't have to be sorry because they should be. It's almost too predictable thatHarper's supervillain origin story is one in which he's rejected by a woman

The fact that we meet Kirby amid the birth of ‘90s riot grrrl culture is a smart choice that serves the show well, at least for an older young person like myself. A lot of research was done on the history of the city by Beukes. There was a great selection of old band shirts. The DIY philosophy of the riot grrrl movement is a crucial part of Kirby's character. The idea of radical self and the idea of mental illness are both related to the idea of Kirby being unreliable.

Image: Apple

In removing the "chosen ones" aspect from the story, a cursory interpretation of the show might say that he's picking random girls, stalking them across different decades, and brutally murdering them while leaving behind bits of evidence as in- jokes for himself. Shining Girls isn't a show about "senseless" violence, it's a show about riot grrrl politics. It is about how righteous, radical, complicated anger is able to meet a force. The definition of violence in the dictionary should be expanded to include something that could be beneficial. The way Kirby tries to radicalize Jinny is similar to the way she uses live music as a vehicle for freedom and expression.

Some of the show's loftier ambitions fall flat in the face of all this sweaty, righteous gusto. It feels like the show is pushing some kind of inevitability angle that undermines its message about the intimacy of gender-based violence. I am not sure if the show knows what it wants to do with all of these astrophysical metaphors.

At the end, where everyone is safe, it feels weird but understandable. I was afraid that Apple would order another season of the show because I was filled with dread when she finally kickedHarper out of the house. Shining Girls is a bold adaptation that revived an ancient anger in me. Kirby ended the season with a better wig and a better jacket. She was deserving of that.

Shining Girls is available on Apple TV.