Gritty 'American Crime' delves into gray areas

This is America as we seldom see it — presented in a way we've never seen.

And in TV terms, at least in the early going, it's also something else: A triumph for Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave), who created, produced and directed Thursday's American Crime premiere (ABC, 10 ET/PT, * * * * out of four), and a reconfirmation that Felicity Huffman is one of the best actors we have.

That doesn't mean the first four hours ABC made available for preview are easy to watch. The subject matter is as tough as it comes: A murder that sweeps across our racial, ethnic and class divisions and calls into question the depths of our prejudices and the worth of our justice system.

Adding to the designed discomfort, Ridley's directorial style is purposely, shockingly jarring. Images you normally expect to be in focus are not; conversations you expect to connect to the images don't. Transitions are abrupt; emotions are raw.

In lesser hands, the disruptive flourishes would come across as style for style's sake; here, disruption is the goal. And in a lesser show, the characters would come across as a collection of social "types," chosen to represent their assigned issues. Here, they come across as real, deeply flawed people caught in a system that seems to care for none of them.

In no case is that truer than with Huffman's Barb, who is the morally questionable center of the story. Barb is a Lifetime movie heroine: a tough, divorced mother who raised her children alone, and is fighting now to bring her son's murderer to justice. Except this isn't that kind of show, and Barb's battles have not just made her stronger; they've made her hate all the people she's felt she had to fight.

Which is why Huffman's gut-wrenching performance is so startling. A bundle of barely concealed fury, Huffman forces us to invest in a woman who thinks her bigotry makes her not just right, but noble.

Barb's rage envelops the story, but it is not her story alone. It also belongs to Russ (Timothy Hutton), her ex-husband; to Eve and Tom Carlin (Penelope Ann Miller and W. Earl Brown), the parents of her son's wife; and to Alonzo Gutierrez (Benito Martinez), a hard-working Mexican-American whose faith in the American Dream threatens to destroy his family.

Even more remarkably, perhaps, this America also belongs to possible suspects Aubry (Caitlin Gerard) and Carter (Elvis Nolasco) — impoverished addicts who care only for each other. Other crime shows would either pity or dismiss them; American Crime infuses their drug-fueled dedication with its own kind of dignity.

The task American Crime has set for itself is an incredibly hard one, and there's no guarantee the show will be able to sustain the momentum of its early episodes. (Think the second-half collapse of True Detective.) It's possible the mystery at the center of the story will be unable to sustain the weight it has to carry, or that the complications to come will begin to seem contrived or predictable.

And it's also possible American Crime will just get better and better.

I can't wait to see.