HBO’s ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’: the full review

Miniseries review: HBO's "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," directed by Liz Garbus, Elizabeth Wolff, Miles Kane and Josh Koury (based on the book "I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer" by Michelle McNamara)

A decade ago, a pair of psychologists at the University of Illinois learned something interesting about gender-based reading habits. They discovered that, when given a choice of violent reading material, women preferred stories about true crime.

And not just any type of true crime. According to a university press release, “(W)omen overwhelmingly opted to read true stories about the death and dismemberment of victims much like themselves.”

If she were still alive, Michelle McNamara would no doubt agree. Before she died suddenly in 2016, McNamara had long been fascinated by true crime. A trained writer – she’d earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Minnesota – McNamara created the website TrueCrimeDiary on which she posted pieces written in a style that combined criminal investigation with personal reflection.

She had written extensively about one particular series of violent crimes for Los Angeles magazine – and then she’d expanded that same investigation into a full-length book, which she titled “I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer.”

When McNamara died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, the book wasn’t quite finished. But her husband, the standup comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, along with others – some of whom had been her associates, others of whom were either still-active or retired police detectives – shepherded the book through completion, and it was published in early 2018. It ended up hitting the top of the New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction and remained on the list for 15 weeks.

Now we have the six-part HBO series, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” a group production led by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus, who directed two of the segments and who shares writing credits with McNamara. 

Many of the true-crime miniseries that have achieved acclaim in recent years – Netflix’s “Making a Murderer,” for example, “The Keepers” and “Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist” – focus on crimes and the ensuing investigations.

And in many respects “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” follows the same path, keying on the rash of progressively violent crimes that, between 1973 and 1986, haunted neighborhoods first near Sacramento, then in Central and finally in Southern California.

Part of what the series documents is how much police work improved over the decades, from better cooperation between regional departments to the development of the DNA techniques that eventually snared the killer, Joseph DeAngelo Jr., who on June 20th of this year confessed to multiple counts of murder, kidnapping and rape.

But what Garbus and her team do also is place a spotlight clearly on the victims, many of whom are given ample opportunity to tell their stories – and to whom McNamara’s efforts provided both a sense of solace and a kind of emotional release.

Which is something that, sadly enough, McNamara herself didn’t get to enjoy. The series emphasizes the power of her writing (actress Amy Ryan reads sections of the book in McNamara’s voice) while, despite her seemingly happy marriage and equally intimate relationship with her daughter, also details some of her private emotional struggles – and how those struggles, the full extent of which her family and friends were unaware, involved drugs.

Obsessed by her subject, feeling pressured to hit writing deadlines, delving daily into depictions of horror that would give Stephen King nightmares, McNamara became increasingly dependent on such prescription pharmaceuticals as Adderal to stay alert, Xanax and fentanyl to sleep. The mix ultimately proved fatal.

As much as anything else, HBO’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” serves as a touching eulogy, with each of those interviewed – from Oswalt to investigators and even victims – paying tribute both to McNamara’s doggedness as well as her sensitivity.

It’s that sensitivity in particular that may offer at least a partial explanation as to why true crime appeals so much to women. As Kate Tuttle, writing in the New York Times, explains, it’s for much the same reason that children have traditionally connected with fables such as “Hansel and Gretel.”

“Because the fear is a thrill,” Tuttle wrote,” because they can imagine themselves in the same situation and they like the useful advice about bread crumbs and white pebbles. And because in the end justice is served — evil is vanquished and the lost children make their way home.”

This review was broadcast originally on Spokane Public Radio.