JUST FINISHED WATCHING: UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN (2022)

A devout detective's faith is tested as he investigates a brutal murder seemingly connected to an esteemed Utah family's spiral into LDS fundamentalism and their distrust in the government.

TRIVIA: The series is based on the real-life 1984 murders of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter Erica Lafferty.

The town of Rockwell is fictional, and the real Lafferty case occurred in the town of American Fork, Utah.

Josie's dementia sometimes leads her to refer to aspects of LDS doctrine that were once accepted but that are now officially frowned upon. One example of this is when she starts to rant about the salvation of Jewish people. She says: "The Jews, they need baptisms. . . . You know, if the Jews don't accept Christ, they . . . they're gonna find themselves in the Celestial Kingdom with Hitler." Jeb and Rebecca ask her to stop saying that kind of thing because it scares their daughters. In 1994 it was revealed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was regularly performing posthumous proxy baptisms for Jewish people, including Holocaust victims. This scandal enraged Jewish people worldwide, since it obliviously echoed the forced conversions and persecutions that Jews were obliged to undergo at many points across history. Though the LDS Church promised to stop proxy-baptizing those who died in the Holocaust, and other Jewish people, it was later revealed that this practice continued with such well-known Jewish figures as Daniel Pearl and Anne Frank.

MY VERDICT: I did enjoy this series, the acting was great, Andrew Garfield especially but it was difficult to watch in some places. The crime itself at the heart of it all is horrific and heartbreaking and the paths the characters follow is sad to see, especially because it’s a true story.

Watch this here…