Apple TV+
Rarely has a show more ineptly masked its central mystery than The Crowded Room, a 10-part fiasco that gives away its essential secret in its credits, when it notes that it’s inspired by The Minds of Billy Milligan, a 1981 non-fiction book about an infamous serial rapist. Apple TV+ designates that bombshell, as well as any other meaningful detail about its protagonist, supporting players or plot, a spoiler, so it won’t be revealed here.
Yet considering that Billy Milligan is the subject of not only author Daniel Keyes’ aforementioned bestseller but also a 2021 Netflix docuseries (Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan), it’s impossible not to immediately know what this series is up to, thereby turning it into an excruciatingly protracted waiting game to learn things that are already plain as day.
The Crowded Room is thus a unique TV affair—one that spoils itself from the outset, and then pretends that it hasn’t, endlessly teasing the very information it’s already divulged, and continues to proffer with each ham-fisted misdirection and clunky elusion. That’s the most significant failing of Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman’s series (which premieres June 9), although far from its only one, given that it additionally reimagines Milligan’s tale in mawkishly uplifting Hollywood terms.