DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
WORMWOOD
December 15, 2017  | By David Bianculli

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

 

MINISERIES PREMIERE: This new miniseries is from Errol Morris, who blew up the standard notion of the documentary form with his brilliant The Thin Blue Line almost 30 years ago, is still at it, and still going strong. Like The Thin Blue Line, this new production, Wormwood, is richly photographed and impeccably researched. It’s mostly a documentary, with lots of archival footage and freshly conducted interviews, but it also features recreations and dramatic interpretations, starring Peter Sarsgaard as a scientist named Frank Olson and Molly Parker as his wife. In 1953, the real Frank Olson, a bacteriologist for the U.S. Army, died after a fall from a high floor of a hotel. Initially described as either an accident or a suicide, the event is probed by Morris, thanks to interviews with one of Olson’s sons and others, that begin to unpeel some amazing layers of additional information. These include the use of LSD by the CIA, and covert operations employing biological weapons, and so much more. Viewers who have feasted on TV investigations of true-life events, such as The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst, will devour this just as eagerly, and satisfyingly. And the title comes from Hamlet, for reasons that will be revealed, like everything else in this Morris series, quite deliberately.

 
 
 
 
 
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