Prime Video’s new erotic thriller, 56 Days, follows an intense romance that spirals into a claustrophobic murder puzzle, leaving viewers wondering — who did what?

Set in present-day Boston, the eight-episode series centers on Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia) and Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron)

The series opens with the two young professionals meeting by chance in a supermarket and quickly falling into an all-consuming relationship. Six weeks later, police are called to Oliver’s upscale apartment, where they discover a badly decomposed body in his bathtub, with no clear identity and no straightforward explanation of how it got there.

From there, the story toggles between the couple’s whirlwind courtship and a present-day investigation led by Karla Souza as Detective Lee Reardon and Dorian Missick as her partner, Detective Karl Connolly.

“I felt more grown up and mature,” Souza told Blavity’s Shadow and Act during our cast interview when asked how it felt to be on the other side of the crime this time. “There’s much more eroticism; we could say bad words. There was just a lot more we could bring into the characters’ lives. And I definitely could tell the difference between what the limitations were versus my past characters.”

As Lee retraces the unknown assailant’s steps, Karl grapples with personal turmoil, including the fallout of a strained marriage and the challenges of co-parenting a young child. The series opens with Karl hinting that his time as Lee’s partner may be ending — just as they’re handed the looming case. His threats to leave the investigation create an undeniable layer of tension between him and Lee.

“He’s got this inner turmoil, and he’s relying on his work wife,” Missick says of the investigator’s relationship. “I love Karl’s journey in the sense that he himself feels like he’s the more messed up of the two. And then as time goes on, he realizes, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve been made to feel this way. This is not actually the case.’”

Going to the dark side

The series is adapted from Irish author Catherine Ryan Howard’s 2021 novel of the same name. Showrunners Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher stripped away the book’s COVID-era time frame and teleported the story to the present day while maintaining the central hook: an intimate look at a couple’s 56-day spiral that keeps viewers questioning whether they’re tracking a victim, a perpetrator or both in the same person.

For Cameron, stepping into the dark, mysterious role marked a significant shift from her Disney Channel roots, where she famously played dual title characters in Liv and Maddie.

“I think a lot of people still see me as someone who is 16, blonde and on Disney. I’m 30 now, so I feel like it’s long overdue that I do something that feels really challenging. This was a bit of a risk. I was ready and excited, and honestly, it was the most fun I’ve had playing a role in a long time,” she said.

Jogia described playing Oliver as exploring the “totality of the human experience.”

“We’re all capable of a broad spectrum of human emotions,” he said, later adding, “Sometimes we’re guarded, and that behavior gets interpreted as vulnerability.”

He continued, “Behind the vulnerability is a desire to be seen and to be loved. And so it’s like a multi-layer cake of things that every person is going through. It’s nice being able to turn a little bit more into the dangerous stuff and do some villain work. But I think it’s all a spectrum; it’s all his truth.”

56 Days is now streaming on Prime Video.