Out of sync

Unlike any other television series I’ve watched, Rectify (SundanceTV) moves slowly and carefully and is as much about a person’s inner life as it is about external circumstances. Its exploration of moral and spiritual landscapes suggests new and unexpected directions for television.

In the first season, Daniel Holden (Aden Young) is released from Georgia’s death row after serving 19 years for the rape and murder of his high school girlfriend, Hannah. New DNA evidence has vacated his sentence, but it has not fully exonerated him. He returns to his hometown and to the people who were devastated by the murder and his conviction. Although questions of guilt hover in the background, the show is not about whether Daniel committed the crime, and by the end of the third season (a fourth and final season begins later this year), it’s not clear that viewers will ever know what happened to Hannah. Instead the show’s central question is: What in this complex community—and in Daniel himself—can be made right?

Blinking into the sun on the day of his release, Daniel looks more like a cornered animal than a freed soul. He spends most of the first season staring out windows, trapped between memories of prison (which are shown in flashback) and his sudden freedom.