The new eerie crime drama Black Bird on Apple TV+ has taken fans by storm and has been raved about in the reviews, but is it a true story?
It seems Apple TV+ is looking to take on the big-boy streaming sites like Netflix and Prime when it dropped the six-part series Black Bird, on Friday July 8.
Warning – Spoilers ahead for Black Bird
What is Black Bird About?
Developed by Dennis Lehane for Apple TV+ the series stars Taron Egerton (Rocketman), Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai), Sepideh Moafi (The Deuce), and of course the late Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), who passed away in May.
Black Bird follows the story of convict Jimmy Keene (Liotta and Egerton), a low-level drug dealer, who is offered to have his 10-year prison sentence waved in the 1990s in return for getting a confession out of serial killer Larry Hall (Hauser), after the bodies of several young girls are found.
Hall is only in prison after being convicted on a kidnapping charge even though the police had suspected his links to dozens of rapes and murders.
Without giving too much away, Keene has to work hard to get Hall to confess in any way he can, or faces waiting out his prison sentence.
Is Black Bird Based on a true story?
Black Bird is absolutely based on a true story. The series is based on the 2010 autobiographical novel In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption by James Keene – or Jimmy Keene as he’s known in the show.
Originally Keene was placed in a minimum-security prison for such low-level crimes, but he was given a choice by the officials, he could enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend suspected serial killer Hall in exchange for his freedom, or stay in the original prison and serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole.
Keene picks the first option – but only after his father suffered a stroke, as he originally didn’t want to – and is placed with Hall in order to find out what happened to and where were the bodies of dozens of girls.
Hall had previously confessed to the crime, but went back on it, after saying he’s only confessed because of ‘dreams’ he had.
Five months in Keene got Hall to speak about his crimes and even got him to confess the murder of an unknown girl. By 1999 Keene’s criminal record was wiped clean for his help and Hall remains in the high-security prison with no chance of parole.