When the body of an 11-year-old boy is found in the woods, all clues point towards a local teacher, but how could he be in two places at once?

If it wasn’t for Stephen King’s name on the credits, you might have been fooled into thinking that this 10-part adaptation of the 2018 novel was a straightforward murder procedural, but nothing could be further from the truth. For a start, witnesses and evidence make it very clear to detective Ralph Anderson (a grieving Ben Mendelsohn) that it’s an open and shut case. He makes a big deal of arresting Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) at a school baseball match, suggesting that it’s not a whodunnit, rather a whydunnit.

We too are convinced of the guilt, as three witnesses describe how they ran in to Maitland before and after the murder, incriminatingly covered in blood. There’s even clear CCTV footage of him at a train station, as if he’s goading the authorities. But even in the face of fingerprints and DNA matches, Maitland denies his involvement, and we believe him. We witness the lives of those around him fall to pieces as the nightmare scenarios develops, and just who is the mysterious hooded person who witnesses events from the sidelines?

Verdict: A perfectly pitched opener directed by Jason Bateman that piques your interest from the off, throwing more curve balls at the viewer than the kids on Maitland’s baseball team. Nothing is what it seems, and neither do we want it to be. There’s a dark secret here in deepest Georgia, and it’s going to be fun unearthing the truth. 9/10

Nick Joy