The dating landscape is precarious at best. Therefore, when connection and attraction are mutual, it can create a frantic and destructive obsession. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Howard and adapted for television by Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher, Prime Video’s latest thriller, “56 Days,” is an engaging series about revenge, secrets and the magic of electric chemistry. While some of the twists are more obvious than others, the show thrives because the audience never knows what to expect.
“56 Days” begins at the end of the story, the day a body is discovered. A masked figure is seen entering apartment 11 in a luxury complex in Boston. Rotten flowers wither in a vase, the fireplace is lit and clothes are scattered everywhere. However, the bath reveals what happened here: submerged in a tub filled with liquid is a decomposing corpse. The masked figure takes a photo of the corpse before leaving the unit and activating the fire alarm. From there, the program rewinds to day 1.
Viewers meet Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron), a young woman who has just moved to the city. After leaving her modest, termite-infested studio, she heads to the supermarket with her tattered NASA bag in hand. At the store, she runs into Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a wealthy and prominent architect who immediately falls in love with the fascinating brunette. The couple’s steamy courtship heats up with space shuttle banter, cocktails, and sizzling sexual chemistry. However, as the audience discovers, both Ciara and Oliver have secrets that they are desperate to keep hidden from each other.
After the fire alarm sounds, Detective Lee Reardon (Karla Souza) and her partner, Detective Karl Connolly (Dorian Missick), are called to the crime scene. Unfortunately, your research is not simple. Apartment 11 is registered to a company and despite the horrible smell seeping into the hallways, it takes some time to get a warrant. Furthermore, the body in the bathtub is completely unidentifiable. As the couple consults with forensics and begins to piece things together, detectives discover that the unit was once the home of Oliver and his girlfriend, Ciara. But no one knows who lies rotting in the bathtub.
Over the course of eight episodes, “56 Days” moves back and forth between the past and the present. More information is revealed about Ciara and Oliver’s erotic and hedonistic relationship and their respective pasts. Although outwardly affable, Oliver is a man plagued with anxiety, desperate to leave behind a past he cannot erase. By contrast, Ciara seems innocent and naive at first, especially compared to her irascible older sister Shyla (Megan Peta Hill). But it soon becomes clear that he has come to Boston for a particular reason and will not rest until he achieves exactly what he came for.
“56 Days” is compelling because of the haunting mystery at its center and the narrative’s ability to develop throughout the ever-changing timeline. The show captures the all-consuming frenzy of lust and chaos that arises from a fiery relationship with no true depth or knowledge of the other party. Additionally, the series examines the fortunes of privilege and how second, third and fourth chances (and lives) can be created as long as there is the right amount of money on the table. Additionally, “56 Days” explores how childhood experiences can alter the course of your life, imprison your mind, arrest fundamental development, and foster fixations and paranoia. Although several incidents border on the absurd, especially in the fifth episode, “Chapter 5,” which chronicles the couple’s 32nd day together, the plot always finds a way to draw the viewer back in just as they begin to scoff in disbelief.
In the end, “56 Days” is a wild ride that changes dramatically as Oliver and Ciara’s story unfolds, leading toward the conclusion of their romance. The final reveal isn’t as shocking as Netflix’s “His & Hers” or as sinister as Prime Video’s “The Girlfriend.” However, when it opens to the audience and Detectives Reardon and Connolly, it’s an ending that even the most committed viewer is unlikely to predict.
All eight episodes of “56 Days” premiere February 18 on Prime Video.
