Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s erotic crime thriller, ’56 Days’, follows the complicated romance of Oliver and Ciara over a course of two months, following which a dead body is found in Oliver’s apartment. The story unfolds over two timelines. In one, we see Oliver and Ciara meet and fall in love, while also keeping a lot of secrets from one another. Parallel to it runs a timeline 56 days after their meeting, where a badly decomposed dead body is found in Oliver’s apartment, which he shared with Ciara, and before the cops can try to find the culprit, they have to identify the victim. Developed by Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher, the show presents eight episodes full of twists and turns, while also presenting a realistic, albeit toxic, nature of the characters and the bad decisions they make. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Fictional Premise of 56 Days was Formed During the COVID-19 Lockdown
’56 Days’ is an entirely fictional story, adapted from the 2021 book of the same name by Catherine Ryan Howard. The idea came to her during the lockdown that was imposed in March 2020 in Ireland. At the time, she was living alone in a small apartment in Dublin city center and had been working on a different book. When the lockdown was imposed, people were told to stay in their houses unless they were out shopping for essential items or for their daily exercise. In any case, the movement was limited to a two-kilometer radius. Due to this, the authorities also advised people not to be in physical contact unless they were living together.
For new couples, this meant that either they could put their blossoming romance on hold until the restrictions were lifted, or they could go all in and move in together. This led Howard to wonder what it would be like for a young couple to move in together so quickly, when they are still getting to know each other, and when there are all these dark secrets they don’t want the other person to know about. The idea of this premise had been in her head for a while, but the lockdown situation clicked things such that she immediately started working on the story, and by the time the lockdown was lifted, she had a complete idea of who the characters were, what secrets they were hiding, and what impact the revelations would have on their relationship.
The Author’s Surroundings Informed the Characters and Their Lives
When Catherine Ryan Howard started writing Ciara and Oliver’s story, she did not draw from any specific people to form the characters. She had a faint idea of their backgrounds and how their past was going to impact their future. Still, she wanted them to come across as realistic, so that the audience could connect to them and sympathise with them enough to root for them despite the things they do in the story. One of the details she used to highlight the contrast between the characters was to show where they live, at least before they move in together. She borrowed the restrictions of the lockdown rules and decided to put her characters within a two-kilometer radius of each other.
Howard also chose to keep them within the Dublin city center, which allowed her to create a vivid image of their surroundings and bring them closer to reality. At the time, she herself was living in a studio apartment, which was pretty small compared to the place she later moved into. She used the place to create the image of Ciara’s apartment, which is a shoebox compared to the place Oliver lives in, which Howard based on the new apartment she moved into later. With details like these, the characters popped off the page and became more lively for the readers. When the book was adapted for the screen, several changes were made to the setting. To begin with, the writers dropped the lockdown setting in Ireland and moved the story to Boston.
Several other details were also tweaked to make the story and the characters more American, with new plot points added to adapt it for the visual medium. The actors, Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia, read the book to understand the psyche of their characters and the reasons behind their actions, good or bad. They also had lengthy discussions with the writers and the directors to get to the root of their characters’ motivations, which informs their performances in a way that every expression and action feels justified in hindsight, and brings a sense of realism to Ciara and Oliver.
Read More: 56 Days Ending Explained: Who is the Victim?
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