Jude Law and Jason Bateman play, respectively, Jake and Vince Friedken, two estranged brothers in Black Rabbit. Vince comes back from Reno, saying he’s passing through, but fate puts both of their troubles together again. Vince, who has a crippling gambling addiction, owes mob boss Joe Mancuso (Troy Kostur) maybe tens of thousands of dollars. Jake, running Vince’s titular restaurant, has to ask his ex Val (Dagmara Domińczyk) for some money too.

We’ll get back to the money later, dirty or clean, but let’s discuss Black Rabbit‘s B-plot. That plot arc involves Anna (Abbey Lee), the restaurant’s waitress who becomes a victim of rape and murder. While that’s happening, Mancuso knows how to exercise power over the Friedkens – his son, not so much. Despite fate backing the Friedkens into a corner, they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

I have some biases that make me favour Black Rabbit and that’s because Laura Linney directs two episodes. She directs scenes with her former work husband Bateman but her episodes deal with other plots as well. One plot involves the restaurant’s chef Roxie (Amaka Okafor), who tries everything to get toxic Vince out. And she, like fellow directors Bateman, Ben Semanoff, and Justin Kurzel, capture New York City’s chaotic moments.

Black Rabbit‘s shorter episodes have Linney in the director’s chair but she does much with little. But of course, the longer episodes with the male directors are just as good when it comes to storytelling. Ben Semanoff’s episodes are the ones that incorporate further flashbacks and multiple points of view. These climactic episodes add new ways of telling the story that makes the characters and their relationships deeper.

Black Rabbit lets its viewers spend a few hours with its characters, juggling all of them quite well. I already wrote about six characters and this miniseries has more but thankfully, it doesn’t feel crowded. There’s even nuance as it shifts towards Mancuso and Babbitt (Chris Coy), the former’s ASL interpreter. The scenes with them show that their history with the Freidkens complicates their control of the New York underworld.

Eight episodes is just the right amount for Black Rabbit, to show the Freidkens go through it. Sure, there are some times when it feels like they have too many helpful deus ex machinae. But those plot twists just show that everyone slips, not just these two brothers who are uniquely troublesome. And the further viewers get into this miniseries, the more these episodes reveal these characters’ deep humanity.

Black Rabbit is available to stream on Netflix.