Parents' Guide to

Under the Banner of Heaven

By Joyce Slaton, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

A bloody murder anchors fascinating tale of extremism.

TV FX Drama 2022
Under the Banner of Heaven Television: Poster image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

Community Reviews

age 17+

Based on 7 parent reviews

age 18+

Don't Bother

Disappointed to find nudity 50 minutes into the first episode. Upsetting to find a show and get into it, just to end up turning it off. Could have had another viewer if it weren't for the unnecessary and inappropriate scene.

This title has:

Too much sex
7 people found this helpful.
age 18+

Unnecessary nudity

I watched this because from the review on this site I thought it was family friendly, and I was met with unnecessary nudity in the first episode. gratuitous, made me stop watching because it was just dumb
2 people found this helpful.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (7 ):
Kids say (1 ):

Equal parts remotely fascinating and intimately emotionally affecting, this arresting drama tells a stranger-than-fiction story that slowly unwinds to show how the LDS faith contributed to a tragedy. Like the true crime novel it's based on, Under the Banner of Heaven tells several stories at once: the skewed and poisonous family dynamics that led to the murder of two members, and the religion that allowed the extremist views of that family to take hold and to flower. To that end, the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter Erica is primarily dispatched of in the drama's first few minutes, while the crime's investigation spools out slowly over the series' episodes as we watch significant scenes from the Lafferty's family life play out, interspersed with dramatizations of important moments from the origins of Mormonism and flashbacks to figures like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

It all adds up to a story that seems simple at first until Detective Pyre, sensitively played by Andrew Garfield as a solid family man horrified by the details he's uncovering, begins poking around and uncovers the proverbial can of worms. Not just about the murder he's investigating, though there are plenty of those, but also about the rise of fundamentalism in Mormonism, and the conditions under which LDS was started in the nineteenth century. It's heady history indeed, and encapsulating it through the lens of one family's tragedy makes it both digestible and irresistible.

TV Details

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