NYTimes: Watch This: ‘Alias Grace’
Looking for a quick midweek binge? Our TV critic has two great recommendations.
Watch if you want a murder show, but different.
‘Alias Grace’
When to watch: Now, on Netflix.
Credit…Sabrina Lantos/Netflix
I’ve been craving mini-series. If you have too, watch this richly told six-part historical drama from 2017. “Alias Grace” is based on the Margaret Atwood novel, which is itself based on the true story of Grace Marks (played by Sarah Gadon), a maid who was convicted of a double murder in Canada in 1843. But this doesn’t have the luridness of other true-crime shows, and sometimes it feels — in a good way — like a dark spinoff of “Anne of Green Gables.”
“Alias Grace” has a canny eye for its characters’ charisma and the way they frame their own truths, and the characters are often performing for one another: telling their version of events to a psychiatrist, to a courtroom, to a confidante, to an accomplice, or maybe relaying what was just told to them, folding story into story into story. It’s substantial but not a big commitment.