Long Bright River

Long Bright River, whose eight-episode season will stream in full on March 13, is neither a transcendent nor an incompetent example of this type of show. But in its familiarity, it illustrates the limitations of the popular fantasy that one extraordinary woman can right the entrenched wrongs of a broken patriarchal institution.

It has a winning performance from Amanda Seyfried. .... But the structure of the series, and the underlying mystery driving it, isn’t as compelling. (It’s not difficult to figure out the killer; the whole thing could have been done in half the time.)

“Long Bright River,” created by Nikki Toscano (“The Offer”) and Liz Moore and based on Moore’s novel, neglects credible crime solving in favor of gothic melodrama that jumps between clichés of family reconciliation and feminist empowerment. The emotional logic changes from scene to scene, while Mickey mostly reads as bottled up, evasive and uninteresting; the one-note character makes minimal use of Seyfried’s abilities. (Pinnock, Harriet Sansom Harris, as Mickey’s landlord, and Perry Mattfeld, as one of the prostitutes, do good work.)

That Seyfried and Cummings are able to take audiences to any sort of satisfying destination is admirable and even rewarding. But not even they can make you forget how much better this too-long, insufficiently bright journey could have been.

By its closing scenes, when characters just sit down to have a nice long cry about their feelings, it’s hard to find many reasons why “Long Bright River” couldn’t have made the journey to that catharsis a little more exciting.