Bring HBO's The Outsider Inside on Blu-ray

While HBO's THE OUTSIDER was based on a singular novel, and while the series wrapped up an entire story arc within its confines, I find it comforting to see that the home video release of the series is listed on Amazon as "The First Season." This doesn't appear anywhere on the box art, so whether or not this cast -- or parts of this cast -- will return for another mystery is anyone's guess, but it's a ray of hope nonetheless.

The show kicks off with the gruesome murder of a child, where video, eyewitness, and even DNA evidence point to the killer as being the upstanding citizen and Little League coach, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman). Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), who knows what it's like to lose a child, wants to make an exampe of Maitland and arranges his arrest to be made very publicly.

But once Maitland is locked up, Anderson is presented with conflicting evidence -- video, eyewitness, and DNA evidence, again, but this time placing Maitland over seventy miles away at the exact time of the murder. Thus begins the mystery of how one man could be in two places at the exact same time.

Anderson gets referred to a private investigator, Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo), who exhibits several autistic savant characteristics allowing her to find connections between events. What she uncovers are multiple murder arrests of people who were likewise up against the same conflicting evidence; murders that she deduces to have all been committed by the same entity, thus opening the door to a supernatural element that Anderson and his team have varying degrees of difficulty accepting.

This motley crew of investigators will struggle to find common ground to proceed on the evidence given, because if Holly is right, another murder spree is scheduled to take place, involving one of their own.

THE OUTSIDER is a taut, suspenseful drama series full of surprising turns and interesting character developments. Not having read the Stephen King novel, I cannot attest to how accurately this adaptation adheres to the source -- King being perhaps cursed with the best books converted into the worst movies. However, accurate or not, this adaptation is nonetheless a fantastic binge-watch for some edge-of-your-seat suspense. And when it's all over, the question -- What else is out there? -- again gives hope that this ground-level X Files kind of adventure may continue into another season.