When They See Us Review

Ava DuVernay's structure is her argument. Part One is the night in the park and the station house, and it plays the coercion almost in real time: hungry, frightened boys held for hours, detectives supplying the story, a father telling his son to sign so they can all go home. Part Two is the trials, Part Three follows four of them out of juvenile detention into a city that has already decided who they are, and Part Four belongs to Korey Wise alone.

That last part is why the series is remembered. Jharrel Jerome plays Korey at sixteen and as a grown man, the only one of the five not recast for adulthood, through years in adult prisons where he chooses isolation over beatings, and he won the Emmy for it. Niecy Nash, Aunjanue Ellis, John Leguizamo and Michael K. Williams carry the parents' side, and Bradford Young shoots it dark and close.

The weak point is the prosecution. Felicity Huffman's Linda Fairstein is a villain from her first scene, and some late dialogue states a thesis the images had already made. Fairstein sued, and after a 2024 settlement Netflix added a disclaimer that parts are fictionalised. The case against the system never rested on her, which is why the series survives it.