Rectify

Released because of new DNA evidence but still not cleared of the rape and murder that put him to prison for 19 years, Daniel Holden moves quietly back into the community where he was raised. He finds himself a stranger — to his sister who worked so tirelessly to see him released; to his mother, who wants to both consume him and give him the privacy and independence he lost; to his step-brother, resentful of the penalty Daniel’s release imposes on his business; and to the younger brother who never knew him except through listening to mix tapes he discovered among Daniel’s teenage miscellanea. The town of Paulie itself is a distrustful stranger — unfamiliar and unknowable and unwilling to accept Daniel back into the fabric of life. The townspeople are fearful of Daniel and their own secrets as well. Can Daniel come home again, or is escape from Paulie the best he can hope for? Can he come alive or will he succumb to the dead weight of an ever-present past? Rectify addresses issues of forgiveness and retribution, of rehabilitation and rebirth, of loss and how to resume a life interrupted, and it does so with focused attention, quiet beauty, and a deliberate pace. For giving its characters the time to unfold and its viewers the path to find their ways through the ambiguities of Daniel’s uncertain innocence, a Peabody Award goes to Rectify.