NEW HULU SERIES

When does ‘Under the Bridge’ premiere? Release date, cast and trailer for Hulu TV series

Riley Keough stars in a new series covering the 1997 murder of Canadian teenager Reena Virk, a crime described as a “national tragedy”.

Mario AnzuoniREUTERS

Due out this week, a new Hulu drama chronicles the notorious, real-life murder of British Columbia teenager Reena Virk - a crime that shocked Canada.

Fourteen-year-old Virk was killed by a group of her peers in Saanich, B.C, in November 1997. Two fellow teenagers - Kelly Ellard, who was 15 at the time, and Warren Glowatski, then 17, were convicted of her murder. Several other youths, all girls, received assault convictions.

Who appears in Under the Bridge?

Starring Riley Keough and Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, Under the Bridge is based on the best-selling true-crime book of the same name by Rebecca Godfrey.

Keough plays Godfrey, who spent six years investigating Virk’s murder, conducting interviews with a wide range of people associated with the case, including Glowatski. Godfrey died in 2022, just days after Hulu had announced that it was adapting her book to the small screen. Gladstone, meanwhile, appears in the miniseries as the fictional police officer Cam Bentland.

Under the Bridge’s main cast also features Vritika Gupta - who plays Virk - as well as Izzy G, Chloe Guidry, Michael Buie, Ezra Farouke Khan, Archie Panjabi, Javon Walton, Aiyana Goodfellow and Anoop Desai.

When is Under the Bridge released?

An eight-part series, Under the Bridge is to premiere in the United States on Hulu on Wednesday 17 April 2024. The streaming service will initially release the first two episodes, before bringing out an instalment each week until 29 May.

Under the Bridge: watch the trailer

A “national tragedy”

A crime that was the catalyst for anti-bullying and anti-youth violence campaigns across Canada, Virk’s killing has been described in the country’s media as a “national tragedy”.

“[The] poor girl [was] seeking acceptance by this group of girls,” former Vancouver Sun reporter Neal Hall told an interview with CBC this month. “She really didn’t fit in, she was a real outsider and they just beat her and ended up killing her.”

Current Saanich mayor Dean Murdock, who at the time was a high-school student, told the Global News last month that the murder “rocked the community”.

“The idea that something so horrific could happen in our community, it was really upsetting and very unsettling,” Murdock said.

“And I think the release of this series is probably going to surface a lot of those feelings for some folks in our community. And it may be a challenge or maybe challenging to watch some of that material or deal with those feelings.”

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