Under the Bridge

Under the Bridge is Hulu's devastating true crime limited series adapted from Rebecca Godfrey's book of the same name, recreating the 1997 murder of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk by a group of her teenage peers in the suburbs of Victoria, British Columbia — a case that shocked Canada and raised questions about girlhood, violence, and social belonging that remain uncomfortably relevant. Created by Quinn Shephard, the series refuses the exploitation frameworks that true crime television typically brings to cases involving young victims, instead committing to understanding the social and psychological forces that made something this terrible possible.

Riley Keough plays Rebecca Godfrey herself, a writer who returns to her hometown and becomes entangled in the investigation in ways that blur the line between journalism and emotional investment. Lily Gladstone plays the detective assigned to the case, bringing her characteristic moral authority and physical stillness to a role that requires communicating enormous interior conflict through minimal expression. The ensemble of teenage actors who portray Reena's peers is uniformly extraordinary — their performances rendering the social dynamics of adolescent belonging with painful specificity rather than the simplifications that adult-cast teen dramas typically impose.

Under the Bridge premiered on Hulu in April 2024 to critical acclaim centered on its emotional honesty, the caliber of its ensemble performances, and creator Quinn Shephard's refusal to grant the audience the easy satisfactions of conventional crime narratives. The show was recognized with multiple Emmy nominations, with particular attention directed at Lily Gladstone's performance and the series' treatment of the case's Indigenous dimensions. It is a difficult but essential piece of television about the specific violence that communities enact against those who fail to belong the right way. It streams on Hulu.