Home Entertainment Chris Evans is a dad driven to the edge in Apple TV+ thriller Defending Jacob

Chris Evans is a dad driven to the edge in Apple TV+ thriller Defending Jacob

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I have to admit, I haven’t really paid much attention to Apple TV+, the tech giant’s own fledgeling answer to Netflix (because everybody needs a streaming service of their own nowadays). Mainly because I don’t have any Apple devices in my household which means I’m forced to watch via a rather clunky website on my browser due to there being no non-Apple apps for this. But maybe I’ll just jump through that technically challenged hoop for Defending Jacob.

The upcoming limited series is a star-studded thriller featuring the likes of Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaeden Martell, J.K. Simmons and more. Based on William Landay’s best-selling 2012 novel of the same name, Defending Jacob sees Evans and Dockery as Andy and Laurie Barber, the parents of Martell’s titular Jacob, a quiet 14-year old boy accused of murdering one of his classmates. While the Barbers refuse to believe their son capable of murder at first, as the case gets more convoluted, protective dad Andy finds himself willing to do whatever it takes to keep his son out of prison. Check out the trailer below.

In this gripping, character-driven thriller, a shocking crime rocks a small Massachusetts town and one family in particular, forcing an assistant district attorney to choose between his sworn duty to uphold justice and his unconditional love for his son.

Evans may be back to sporting that swoon-worthy Captain America beard here, but this is a far cry from his decade-long work as the iconic Marvel superhero. This looks like his most dramatic turn yet since hanging up the shield, and I’m really liking what I’m seeing, even getting a bit of a “Hugh Jackman in Prisoners” kind of vibe.

It’s unclear if showrunner Mark Bomback can match up to that Denis Villeneuve masterpiece though. His past screenwriting career has been back and forth in terms of quality, giving us good stuff like Jackman’s The Wolverine and Logan, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes, and Unstoppable, but then also giving dreck like Live Free or Die Hard, Total Recall (reboot), The Mummy (reboot), and Fifty Shades of Grey. This looks like it falls on the much better side of the quality scale though.

Defending Jacob’s eight episodes is set to release on Apple TV+ on 24 April.

Last Updated: March 27, 2020

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