SERIES REVIEW – Toni Collette’s list of memorable mother movies just keeps growing. She’s played tender (“The Sixth Sense”), formidable (“Inheritance”) and complicated (“Tara United States”) maternal characters. Now, in her new Netflix series “Pieces of Her,” Collette plays a deeply enigmatic mother whose troubled past provides the heart of the plot of this twisty thriller.

These days, it takes a lot to grab an audience. Perhaps the word “desensitised” is best applied to the average viewer as our stimulation threshold decreases. Judging by the flood of true-crime series and thrillers – some more violent than others – it seems that the only antidote to this dormant state is buckets of blood and a good jump scare. In nine minutes of the first episode, Pieces of Her delivers both.

Shocking opening scene

Pieces of Her also opens strongly. Laura (Collette) lives in a small town with her daughter Andy (Bella Heathcote). Andy is on the verge of turning 30 and feels slightly aimless, having moved home from New York to care for his mother after being diagnosed with cancer. But she is driven by a search for meaning after a shocking event sets off a chain of surprises.

The best moments of “Pieces of Her” are also the most poignant of the series. In the series’ first episode, Laura and Andy become the targets of an armed attack at a local restaurant. It’s a disturbing scene, but one that becomes mysterious when Laura springs into action to protect her daughter, clearly possessed of some half-remembered killer instinct. The series is shot with a down-to-earth realism by director Minkie Spiro (“Conspiracy Against America”) that makes the forays into action all the more effective.

Shocking twists and turns at first, easy to figure out later

Who is Laura really? This is the central question of the series, and for a few gripping episodes the answer seems completely inscrutable. Pieces of Her throws so many twists in front of the viewer that it leaves us scratching our heads. The series is at its best when it’s several steps ahead of the audience; it’s exciting that we really have no idea what will happen next. Even those used to this kind of mystery will bleed to death at the early solving of the best mysteries in the series. At least for the first half of the season…

Unfortunately, this is not always the case with Pieces of Her later. By the second half of the season, viewers are likely to be ahead of the characters – especially Andy, the unprepared hero who makes terrible decisions in almost every situation. As the final episodes of the season unfold, he shakes out new secrets and twists as tiresomely as the last Tic-Tac from his box, which we’ve been munching away just to get to the end of the empty box.

Based on a novel by a prolific crime story writer

Pieces of Heris based on the popular novel by Karin Slaughter, a prolific crime novelist who has published more than 20 novels to date. This novel is ripe for adaptation; a juicy story full of romance, political intrigue, and family tragedy emerges when the central concept is finally explained. It also bears more than a passing resemblance to some real-life headlines. Flashbacks to the ’80s reveal a talented supporting cast, including Jessica Barden of “The End of the F***ing World” as a tortured young piano player and one of the offspring of a billionaire industrial mogul. Barden’s scenes are the most punchy in the series, though her on-screen plot thread is more ambiguous than the version in Slaughter’s source material.

In addition to Barden, the secondary timeline of the series also stars “Lost” star Terry O’Quinn and “Game of Thrones” actor Joe Dempsie, both of whom play strong, charismatic men. While the series spends a lot of time combing through the archives of Laura’s life, it doesn’t fully exploit either actor. Their characters lurk in Larua’s memories and eventually take over completely, but their insidiousness is mostly subtle, revealed in bite-sized chunks.

We thought it would be a good series all the way through

This brings us to the biggest flaw of I Thought I Knew You, which is overall a compelling thriller, carried along by the performances of Collette and Barden. The series doles out surprises and details about Laura’s past so regularly that you could set your watch by them. Even at eight episodes, it feels as condensed as if Slaughter’s book were being squeezed into a tighter timeline than the plot would allow. The scenes also often run long, trying to make us feel something by focusing on a single theme long after it would have created enough dramatic charge and tension at that point in the plot. The overall effect of both problems is that Pieces of Heris not always well spent.

What’s even more frustrating is that the series sometimes ignores its viewers and doesn’t seem to care whether we understand the details or not. The series, while trying to remain shocking, sometimes remains too confusing. The cast of characters set in two timelines is sprawling, and even non-mysterious relationships are not clearly explained early on, so any further interaction gives the characters the opportunity to confuse. Breathtaking moments are missed when they depend entirely on characters whose names we barely know.

Collette, at the peak of her career

Still, Pieces of Heris one of the better Netflix series, which is a strong positive, given the spread these days. Collette is at the peak of her acting career, and the best parts are often the best, such as when Laura tries to shake off a lingering memory.

Pieces of Her is not perfect – it feels both overstuffed and truncated – but it is undeniably a gripping, altogether exciting and twisty series, with a strong cast and an endless supply of surprises to recommend it.

 -BadSector-