The Hulu adaptation of Alexis Schaitkin’s 2020 novel tries to subvert the trope of dead girl shows, but fumbles the delivery
A mysterious man running in the woods. Police scouring the night with flashlights. A dead white girl submerged in water, naked, hair blond and nails painted. The opening minutes of the new Hulu limited series Saint X tread familiar territory – this could be one of many so-called “dead girl” shows, which begin with a corpse (usually pretty, almost always white) and solve the mystery of her demise. Saint X, the 2020 novel by Alexis Schaitkin, drew praise for subverting the narrow expectations of an old genre, dating back to Twin Peaks and running through such series as Veronica Mars, True Detective, Top of the Lake and, more effectively, Sharp Objects and Mare of Easttown, not to mention countless true crime shows and films.
The TV adaptation of Saint X, produced by one Aubrey Graham (AKA Drake) and developed by Leila Gerstein, aims to preserve the book’s methods of complicating the dead girl script: multiple perspectives, a curiosity about the impact of a sensationalized murder beyond the immediate family, an uneasy commentary on our collective fascination with true crime. The pilot, indistinctly directed by Mudbound’s Dee Rees, starts with a body – that of Alison Thomas (West Duchovny, daughter of David and Téa Leoni), a Princeton freshman on holiday with her wealthy New York exurb family on the Caribbean island of Saint X (all gleaned from unrelentingly clunky exposition). It then quickly roves elsewhere, on at least four timelines.
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