After New York and Los Angeles, what is the third city of American crime drama? Boston, Chicago and San Francisco can all make claims, and many might choose Baltimore for “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Wire.” But lately, another city has been moving up the charts: Philadelphia is suddenly a hot location for moody stories about drugs and murder.
In the mini-series “Long Bright River,” premiering as a binge watch on Thursday on Peacock, and “Dope Thief,” beginning Friday on Apple TV+, Philadelphia is the postindustrial crucible — vibrant but violent, caring but crime-ridden — for tales of working-class heroes doing battle with criminal forces. The shows follow HBO’s 2021 hit “Mare of Easttown” and precede another HBO law-enforcement drama, “Task,” that will feature F.B.I. agents in suburban Philadelphia. (And you can throw in the Hulu comedy “Deli Boys,” about a crime ring based in Philadelphia-area convenience stores.)
The stars of the two new shows, Amanda Seyfried and Brian Tyree Henry, play people who are categorically different on the surface but, for dramatic purposes, could almost be the same character. Seyfried’s Mickey Fitzpatrick in “Long Bright River” is a cop who’s protective of the prostitutes on her beat; Henry’s Ray Driscoll in “Dope Thief” is an ex-con who robs drug houses by pretending to be a federal agent.
Under the surface, though, the two natives of northern Philadelphia are haunted by similar family traumas, seen in copious flashbacks (fathers figure heavily). And as a result each is in need of redemption and transformation, which is the real through line of each series.
They get there in very dissimilar ways, however. “Long Bright River,” which plays like a companion piece to the heavy-going “Mare of Easttown,” is a family soap opera onto which a procedural serial-killer mystery has been grafted. “Dope Thief” is a hyperbolic, postmodern thriller in the guise of a hard-boiled mystery. Personal taste may largely determine which one you respond to, but here’s a tip: If humor counts for anything, then “Dope Thief,” which consistently cuts its angst and violence with reasonably clever, farcical comedy, is the much better use of eight hours.
In “Long Bright River,” Mickey is a single mother with a preternaturally precocious 8-year-old, Thomas (the very charming Callum Vinson); her only family support, if you can call it that, comes from her abrasive grandfather (John Doman). When women on her beat begin to turn up dead at the same time that her estranged sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), goes missing, Mickey starts her own off-the-books investigation.
The mechanics of that detective work — carried out with the help of Mickey’s former partner, Truman (Nicholas Pinnock), who is on leave from the force — beggar belief, even by the standards of TV drama. And the eventual resolution is fairly obvious from the outset in terms of who the killer is, and also smack-your-head goofy in terms of how the killer is brought to justice.
“Long Bright River,” created by Nikki Toscano (“The Offer”) and Liz Moore and based on Moore’s novel, neglects credible crime solving in favor of gothic melodrama that jumps between clichés of family reconciliation and feminist empowerment. The emotional logic changes from scene to scene, while Mickey mostly reads as bottled up, evasive and uninteresting; the one-note character makes minimal use of Seyfried’s abilities. (Pinnock, Harriet Sansom Harris, as Mickey’s landlord, and Perry Mattfeld, as one of the prostitutes, do good work.)
There are limitations on Henry’s performance in “Dope Thief” as well — Ray’s trauma-induced anger gets to be a little too familiar across eight episodes, and his rants and complaints begin to run together. But as written by Peter Craig, based on a novel by Dennis Tafoya, Ray also has occasional notes of tenderness and melancholy regret, which Henry carefully delineates.
Henry is also fun to watch, at least in the early going, because he gets to communicate Ray’s excitement at playing a character: Ray gets turned on when he dons a D.E.A. jacket and forces teenage meth cooks and dealers to get down on the floor, where they’re forced to listen to his lectures. He gets to live out the hero roles from the old westerns we see him watching, alone in his room.
Soon Ray and his partner in strong-arm theatrics, Manny (Wagner Moura), hit the wrong house, and the tense-but-amusing tone of the opening shifts to a more desperate and violent pitch. (“Dope Thief” flattens out slightly after a great opening episode, directed by Ridley Scott; “Long Bright River” picks up at the end, when the directors Jessica Yu and Meera Menon execute the melodrama more stylishly.)
But “Dope Thief” remains entertaining — Craig capably layers biker gangs, a Vietnamese crime family, neo-Nazi killers, actual D.E.A. agents and Ray’s mostly Black neighbors into a sardonic farce that works on its own baroque terms. Henry is ably supported by Ving Rhames as Ray’s convict father; Kate Mulgrew, who is an endearingly hammy scene stealer as Ray’s stepmother; and Moura, who gives an unconventionally affecting performance as the spiraling Manny.
“Dope Thief” and “Long Bright River” often present their Philadelphia backdrop in similar ways — the quick interstitial montages of murals, storefronts and commuter trains are essentially the same. But again, the effect is different, if only because of the color palettes; the saturated, vivid cinematography of “Long Bright River” has a tourist-brochure look that the washed-out, neutral tones of “Dope Thief” avoid. You might prefer to live in the Philadelphia of the first show, but you’re more likely to believe in the Philadelphia of the second.
