Jessica Biel is compelling in this new Facebook Watch series about a town where 326 people went missing.
What is Facebook Watch? Well, I kind of discovered it by accident recently, but before you write it off as some techo hocus pocus you can't be bothered with, hear me out.
So I'd seen clips on my laptop and phone for Limetown - based on a podcast. What's a journalist to do? Listen to the podcast of course! And so it was, on a dreary Saturday evening, rain lashing at the window, husband snoring like a warthog beside me, I tumbled down the rabbit hole into this story.
The tale of a reporter from an American radio station who finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy theory of the highest degree. Fifteen years ago a specially built scientific community, built in the middle of nowhere, rang out the alarm bells. An anonymous, stifled call to 911 begs for help, before the message becomes undecipherable. News teams. Ambulance crews. Police. The FBI. All descend on Limetown, where a three day stand-off, Waco style ensues. Then, just like that, the gates open. Inside? Nothing. Noone. A ghost town. All that remains is the tortured, flamed licked body of one of the community's founders.
Well, that was enough to give me the chills, and I promptly tucked my feet under the covers, ripped out my ear buds and tried to sleep. Until the next day that is, when I decided to find out more about Limetown, and blushingly discovered the pod cast was a fallacy. Fiction. Honestly!
Despite this, I needed to know more. Where did the people all go? What the heck was going on at the facility? Which led me to Facebook Watch. If you're signed up to the social networking site you have free, unlimited access to watch its content. Simply add the app to your Smart TV or search Facebook Watch online and you're good to go.
It's interesting to see how many actors, directors, writers and producers of repute are sowing their seeds out to non-traditional streaming services these days. Only recently Apple TV launched, with the full gamut. Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell in The Morning Show (more on that another week). Jason Momoa in See. And with shows on the way from the likes of M Night Shylaman. These are exciting times indeed for streaming fans.
In the case of Limetown, they've hit a win casting Jessica Biel as journalist Lia Haddock, and can-do-no-wrong Stanley Tucci as her scientist uncle, whose disappearance all those years ago in the town has kept her interest in the topic piqued for most of her life.
Viewers have been watching the show in the millions, giving these stars figures they could only dream about from the silver screen.
Limetown is unsettling, gritty, chilling, shocking. Misery becomes Biel, whose rocky childhood and sense of loss cut her to the bone, leading her to make rash decisions, and to find herself in compromising positions. She lives on the edge, a moth to danger, drawn to the flickering, loitering truth she believes only she can reveal.
Despite her editor's protestations, Lia will not drop her story, even if everyone thinks it's a cold case to be forgotten. And her instincts prove right as one survivor. Then another. And another. Step out of the shadows to reveal their truths.
The pace of storytelling is on point. And the photography - murky, grey, unforgiving - creates a sense of forboding which, combined with the soundtrack, gave this viewer goosebumps.
One things for sure, Lia will not stop until she knows everything. Even if she has to lie, cheat and kill to get the story.
See the whole series now at anytime on Facebook Watch.
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