---
title: "Long Bright River"
year: 2025
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/long-bright-river"
fi1m_id: "long-bright-river"
imdb_id: "tt8332798"
tmdb_id: 244628
wikidata_id: "Q125627128"
fi1m_score: 58
critics_score: 61
critics_reviews: 5
published: "2026-10-01T00:42:43.278876+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-01T00:42:43.724042+00:00"
region: "JP"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Long Bright River (2025)

Created by Liz Moore, Nikki Toscano · Drama, Crime, Mystery

## Identity

Long Bright River

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/long-bright-river
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** long-bright-river
- **IMDb ID:** tt8332798
- **TMDB ID:** 244628
- **Wikidata ID:** Q125627128
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8332798/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/244628, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q125627128

**Fi1m score: 58** · Critics 61 (early) from 5 reviews

*In a sentence:* Amanda Seyfried in a police jacket under the El tracks, asking everyone the same question for eight hours

> Liz Moore adapts her own novel with Nikki Toscano, and the sisters at its centre, Amanda Seyfried and Ashleigh Cummings, are worth your time. The murder mystery wrapped around them is not, and at eight episodes there is a great deal of wrapping.

## Synopsis

Kensington, Philadelphia, in the middle of the opioid epidemic. Mickey Fitzpatrick (Amanda Seyfried) is a patrol officer who walks the avenue under the overhead train tracks with a new partner, Eddie Lafferty (Dash Mihok), after her old one, Truman Dawes (Nicholas Pinnock), is put out of action. Her younger sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) uses and works those same streets, and Mickey has not seen her in weeks. Then women begin turning up dead in the neighbourhood. Mickey, raising her young son Thomas (Callum Vinson) on her own and barely speaking to Gee (John Doman), the grandfather who brought the sisters up, starts asking after Kacey on every corner, with a local doctor, Dr. Aura Williams (Britne Oldford), and among the women who knew her, while Sergeant Ahearn (Patch Darragh) tells her to leave the murders to the detectives.

## Review

Liz Moore’s novel *Long Bright River* was a crime story that cared less about who was killing women in Kensington than about what the neighbourhood had already done to them. Moore and Nikki Toscano have turned it into an eight-part series with the same priorities, and when it holds to them it is a decent, sorrowful piece of television about two sisters and a few blocks of Philadelphia. When it remembers it is also supposed to be a murder mystery, it slows to a walk and stays there. We would put it a little below the middle: for the interested, with reservations.

Amanda Seyfried plays Mickey as a woman who has decided to be correct about everything because the alternative is to feel any of it. She stands straight in the uniform, says the fewest words that will do, and lets the camera catch her looking at every woman on the avenue a second too long. The performance is built out of restraint, and it works because Seyfried lets small things through: a swallow when a body is described, the particular way she says her sister’s name. Nicholas Pinnock, as the former partner Truman, gives her the only scenes in which she is allowed to be tired, and the two of them have an easy, long-married rhythm the series could have used far more of.

Ashleigh Cummings is the surprise. Kacey is the sister everyone has written off, and Cummings plays her without the twitchy addict shorthand television usually reaches for: she is quick, funny, affectionate and furious, and in the flashbacks to the sisters’ childhood with Gee (John Doman) you can see exactly who she was before. Those flashbacks are the series’ best idea. They are short, shot warmer than the present, and they do the job the mystery keeps failing at, which is to make us mind. We did mind. There is a stretch in the first episode in which Mickey holds up her phone to woman after woman on the avenue, a photograph of Kacey on the screen, and each one shakes her head, and it got to us far more than we expected a procedural to manage.

The neighbourhood is done with care. Mylene Santos and Amy Williams’s production design gives us the avenue under the El, rowhouse kitchens that have not been touched since the eighties, lots full of needles and mattresses, and none of it looks dressed. The three cinematographers, Tari Segal, Pepe Avila del Pino and William Rexer, keep the present in a cold flat grey and let the only colour come from shop signs and emergency lights, and the look holds across six directors, which is not nothing. James Poyser and Dimitri Smith score it quietly, piano and held tones, and it rarely gets in the way.

What does not work is the case. The editors, Aaron Marshall, Stephen Philipson and Matt Barber, have been handed a story that would fit comfortably in four hours and asked to make eight, and you can feel the stretching in every episode’s middle twenty minutes: another interview, another lead that goes nowhere, another conversation with Sergeant Ahearn (Patch Darragh) about staying in her lane. Dash Mihok’s Lafferty is written as a lump so that Mickey can be seen not liking him, and the show never finds anything else for him to do. The detectives, Matthew Del Negro’s Simon Cleare among them, arrive with the usual secrets, and the secrets are the usual ones. By the fifth episode we were bored, and then annoyed that a series this serious about real suffering could treat the killing of women as filler between the scenes it wanted to shoot.

Set beside [*Mare of Easttown*](https://film.one/tv/mare-of-easttown), which is the comparison it invites, this is quieter and kinder and much less sure how to be a thriller. *Mare* used its case to drag a whole town onto the screen. Here the case mostly drags Mickey away from the sister, the son (Callum Vinson’s Thomas, nicely unforced) and the grandfather, who are the reason to be watching.

It is worth an evening or two for Seyfried and Cummings, and for a Kensington that looks like a place people live rather than a place television visits. Watch the first two episodes and the last two, if your conscience allows it; we are not sure the middle four would notice.

*Fi1m score 58, published 1 October 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Long Bright River worth watching?**

*Long Bright River* is worth watching for Amanda Seyfried and Ashleigh Cummings as the two sisters, and we scored it 58. The murder mystery wrapped around them is slow and stretched across eight episodes, so this suits viewers who want a sorrowful drama about addiction and family more than a thriller.

**Where can I watch Long Bright River in Japan?**

*Long Bright River* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in Japan. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Long Bright River, and is it suitable for children?**

*Long Bright River* carries a UK 15 certificate and a US TV-MA rating, so it is not for children. It is set in a neighbourhood in the grip of the opioid epidemic, with women found dead and a sister who uses and works the streets, and it treats that suffering seriously rather than as shock. It is bleak rather than frightening.

**How does Long Bright River compare to Mare of Easttown?**

*Long Bright River* is quieter and kinder than [*Mare of Easttown*](https://film.one/tv/mare-of-easttown), and much less sure how to be a thriller. Both are Pennsylvania cop-with-a-family series with a murder plot that is their weakest part, but the earlier series uses its case to bring a whole town onto the screen, while here the case mostly pulls Mickey away from the family scenes that are the reason to watch.

**What should I watch after Long Bright River?**

After *Long Bright River*, try [*Mare of Easttown*](https://film.one/tv/mare-of-easttown) (2021, Fi1m 78): The other Pennsylvania cop-with-a-family series, and it knows how to run a case. Then [*Sharp Objects*](https://film.one/tv/sharp-objects) (2018, Fi1m 84): Damaged sisters, a small town’s dead girls, and far more nerve in the telling; and [*Dopesick*](https://film.one/tv/dopesick) (2021, Fi1m 68): The opioid crisis from the pharmacy upwards, angrier and better organised than this.

### Reviews we read (5)

- **The AV Club**, Max Gao (A-): The AV Club praises the series as a deeply empathetic portrait of the opioid crisis, led by Amanda Seyfried’s outstanding performance. It also singles out the sisters’ relationship and the show’s attentive, lived-in depiction of Kensington for praise. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/long-bright-river-review-peacock-tv-amanda-seyfried)
- **Variety**, Aramide Tinubu (85/100, inferred): Tinubu finds the series beautifully structured and more distinctive than a typical murder mystery. She singles out Amanda Seyfried’s nuanced performance for making Mickey’s burdens and fears palpable. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/long-bright-river-review-peacock-1236330715/)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Daniel Fienberg (35/100, inferred): The critic finds the series bloated and slow to reach its emotional core, though its ending partly redeems the journey. He praises Ashleigh Cummings for grounding the sisterhood story and Amanda Seyfried for her performance. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/long-bright-river-review-amanda-seyfried-peacock-1236161652/)
- **The Guardian**, Benjamin Lee (20/100, inferred): Lee finds the series a clichéd, overlong slog that fails to build emotional involvement or suspense. He singles out its clumsy handling of serious subject matter and says Amanda Seyfried is poorly served by the flat material. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/mar/13/long-bright-river-review-amanda-seyfried)
- **Collider**, Kelcie Mattson (8/10): Mattson finds the series gripping and tender, praising its empathetic treatment of exploited communities despite missing perspectives. She singles out Amanda Seyfried’s arresting performance as the force grounding the story. [Read](https://collider.com/long-bright-river-review/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Liz Moore, Nikki Toscano
- **Creator:** Liz Moore, Nikki Toscano
- **Director:** Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Hagar Ben-Asher, Jessica Yu, Mona Fastvold, Meera Menon, Nikki Toscano
- **Writer:** Liz Moore, Nikki Toscano, Russell Rothberg, Alexandra McNally, Tricia V. Johnson, Alye Capone
- **Cinematography:** Tari Segal, William Rexer, Pepe Avila del Pino
- **Editor:** Matt Barber, Aaron Marshall, Stephen Philipson
- **Music:** Dimitri Smith, James Poyser
- **Production design:** Amy Williams, Mylene Santos
- **Costume design:** Claire Parkinson, Michelle Roy
- **Producer:** Jerry Kupfer
- **Cast:** Amanda Seyfried as Mickey Fitzpatrick; Nicholas Pinnock as Truman Dawes; Ashleigh Cummings as Kacey Fitzpatrick; Callum Vinson as Thomas Fitzpatrick; John Doman as Gee 'Gee-Pop' O'Brien; Dash Mihok as Eddie Lafferty; Matthew Del Negro as Simon Cleare; Britne Oldford as Dr. Aura Williams
- **Release (Japan):** 13 March 2025
- **Genres:** Drama, Crime, Mystery
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmXdzid-JA

## Where to watch in Japan

- Amazon Prime Video: free
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on

*Checked 2026-10-01.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, CZ, DE, EC, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IN, JP, MX, PA, PE, PL, RO, RS, SI, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Mare of Easttown* (2021), Fi1m 78: The other Pennsylvania cop-with-a-family series, and it knows how to run a case. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/mare-of-easttown.md)
- *Happy Valley* (2014): Sarah Lancashire’s sergeant, a dead sister’s ghost, and a valley that will not let go.
- *Sharp Objects* (2018), Fi1m 84: Damaged sisters, a small town’s dead girls, and far more nerve in the telling. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/sharp-objects.md)
- *Dopesick* (2021), Fi1m 68: The opioid crisis from the pharmacy upwards, angrier and better organised than this. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/dopesick.md)
- *Top of the Lake* (2013), Fi1m 82: Jane Campion’s missing-girl drama, with a detective who has her own history in the town. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/top-of-the-lake.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/long-bright-river