Final Witness (TV Series) Graveyard Love (2012) User Reviews

Follow-Up Needed to this Episode

[johos3 · 7/10 · 21 December 2012]

I lived and worked in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina hit, so when this program came up, I was really interested. The reenactment is done with some reality of how it is in the French Quarter. But the French Quarter and surrounding streets are in Orleans Parish and the majority of residents do not shoot, maim and kill. Okay, that's just a pet peeve of mine when they portray my city.

SPOILER! REALITY CRIME SPOILER! Since this was not a fictional movie or program, I did a bit of research. The blonde-haired Sanchez woman who says she was Addie's best friend, is a real person, not an actor. But Sanchez is now in Tangipahoa Parish jail, held on a large bond, wanted in connection with harboring a known sex offender. She and the sex offender were suspects in a murder. When officials saw this program they noticed her and pieced her attachment to the other crime, also committed in New Orleans.

SPOILER AGAIN Sanchez knew and was friends with another female who was also murdered and dismembered. It makes this program even more unique, because it may provide investigative officials with crucial evidence against Sanchez. As one stated in a New Orleans news article, what are the chances that you would be friends with two unrelated people who were murdered and whose remains were disposed of in the same gruesome way?

'Graveyard Love' Elevates the Genre

[gpdavis74 · 9/10 · 29 October 2012]

To be honest, with the frame of reference I have regarding the ID channel that the Final Witness series airs on, 'Graveyard Love' would've gotten a 10 out of 10. What Adam Feinstein has done with this 1 hour docu-drama is set a very, very - let's just say that one more time - very high water mark for production quality on the Investigation Discovery channel.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the channel, ID is all about true crime stories told via shows like 48 Hours (on ID), Dateline (on ID), and Deadly Women. It's newest addition, Final Witness, of which 'Graveyard Love' is the first I've seen so far is not a conceptual leap forward in the genre of true crime shows; in fact, it may very well be an identical twin of ID's own series, Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets (SV,BS). But if this is what happens when a talented director takes an existing idea and makes it their own, let's hope they let Feinstein redo all of their shows.

The core conceptual similarities between 'Graveyard Love' and the SV,BS series are their shared, if not identical, storytelling devices. They both use the story's central character (which in the true crime genre is either the victim, the criminal, or the crime itself... in this case the victim) as the narrator in what feels like perhaps a diary reading narration. But that is where the similarities stop. Like hit a brick wall stop. Plenty of people utilize perhaps the same basic techniques to get from point A to point B in directing television, but very few put all those pieces together as well as Feinstein has with 'Graveyard Love'. From directing to cinematography to editing to overall production, this 1 hour true crime docu-drama makes me feel a whole lot less creatively dirty watching this channel.

The story of 'Graveyard Love' is the story of a young-adult New Orleans couple and the self-implosion of their lives in the wake of Katrina. It follows Addie Hall, a bartender in the French Quarter and the 'love of her life' (how could that possibly go wrong) Zack Bowen, an Iraq War veteran. As two young party people in New Orleans their 'party' (see- booze and drugs) lifestyle complicates an already complicated situation. But it's Katrina that both saves and then ultimately dooms the young couple, culminating in events that not many people will feel comfortable with knowing. Of course, if you're on ID, chances are you're sensibilities are much tougher than your ordinary viewers.

What warrants the 9, or 10 if I'm being subjectively honest, is that 'Graveyard Love' completely elevates both the genre, and the channel as a whole, to a much more sophisticated production plane. Feinstein has created genuine drama in the true crime docu-drama realm. 'Graveyard Love', for maybe the first time in my ID viewing history, truly drew me into the dramatization of the events. What is usually an interesting true crime story, smattered with laughable dramatizations and static interviews, becomes a perfectly balanced beautiful whole under Feinstein's direction. He seems to be the first person that took the word drama seriously in the term dramatization. No longer are you just ignoring the horrible production to listen to the incredible events; with Feinstein's addition(s) to the Final Witness series, the dramatizations, the interviews, every part of this production, tells such a moving solid story, that you even forget you're watching true crime at some point.

If you're a fan of the ID channel or any of it's many shows, you'll really be missing a major move forward in the genre if you skip the 3 episodes that Adam Feinstein has created (I've only seen 'Graveyard Love'). This is what this channel desperately needs, high quality production. If it were up to me, or if anyone at the network has any real sense, this guy would be signed on to do the entire series for as long as the series persists. Nothing is out of place in 'Graveyard Love', but more importantly, everything is where it belongs; where it should have been all along. Perfectly crafted.