Sharp Objects: There are clues hidden everywhere in the new Amy Adams thriller

my Adams as Camille, Madison Davenport as Meredith and Taylor John Smith as John Keene
HBO

Sharp Objects, the new eight-part HBO thriller on Now TV and Sky Atlantic at 9pm on Mondays, already has an Ottolenghi cookbook’s worth of the right ingredients.

There’s an Emmy-worthy turn from Amy Adams and a gripping plot, based on Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name .

But the quietest thrill lies in the visual clues and cues scattered throughout the show like breadcrumbs in the woods. Blink and you’ll miss them. It’s a better eye-test than a trip to the opticians.

Adams plays Camille, a jaded reporter just out of a psychiatric hospital and sent to cover the murder of two girls in Wind Gap, Missouri, her home town, a backwater southern version of Twin Peaks.

Lead: Amy Adams stars as Camille Preaker in Sharp Objects
HBO

She’s troubled: she drinks, blacks out and hallucinates. The written word is her trade, and the show sets its stall out with them too, etching them into the screen margins. Outside a bar, Adams’ car stereo reads “RONG”, only to pan back to find it changed to “AUX”. A highway sign flashes “last chance to change your mind” as she passes, gone in a flash.

In her sister’s doll’s house, one of the paintings reads “girl”, then that too vanishes. “Dirt” is scrawled in the dust that’s gathered on her car bonnet, but a later scene sees it as “dirty”, a word we see a young Camille scratching into her arm later.

The idea is to keep the audience transfixed, alert and in doubt. “There are times you’re seeing Camille’s point of view.” production designer John Paino revealed in an interview with Refinery29. “You’ll think, ‘Was that what I thought it was?’ It’s so quick that it gives a level to the story because of her state of mind, which draws you in and makes it interesting.”

Sharp Objects: Patricia Clarkson as Adora
HBO

This is online fodder. A Reddit community of armchair detectives is already poring over the show’s finer details. “The desk in her apartment had ‘BAD’, among other words, right before she left,” spotted one sleuth on the Reddit thread SharpObjects.

“As well as A DRUNK and BLEED,” adds another.

“How big of a TV do you have? Or do you just really have good eyes? Impressed,” replies a third, who speaks for us all.

When you discover things visually, Paino points out, you’re lured further down the narrative path, immersing yourself in the story. “I think my favourite was the ‘Don’t Be A Victim’ sign in the police station. Amy just decided to glance at it and stare at it. I knew she would be sitting there. So I purposefully placed the sign in the background. It’s a sign about spousal abuse — don’t be a victim; don’t let your spouse abuse you; don’t be abused by your parents. I knew she would be sitting there, waiting for the detective to show up. I put it there, a little above eyeline, so that she’d see it and react to it. And she did. That was great.”

In an age of short attention spans, where your eyes are always drifting to a phone, show runners are ever more eager to set up visual traps to hook the audience. SKAM, a Norwegian phenomenon that ran from 2015-2017, made a point of existing outside your TV screen (a US version, SKAM Austin, began airing in June this year). The characters had Instagram accounts to scroll through, while scenes outside the show would air on your Facebook newsfeed in real time. If a couple got into a fight in school at 12.40pm on a Monday, the clip showed up on the platform at exactly the same time, creating the uncanny impression you were watching something that was actually happening.

It’s hardly subliminal messaging — it’s meant to be found.

But it rewards the watcher; the closer you look, the more you’ll tease out.

Welcome to TV’s latest rabbit hole, where the title is Sharp, and your eyes need to be sharper. Enjoy heading down it, but watch where you’re going.

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