A ten-year sentence, an unexpected deal with federal agents, and a cellblock built for one purpose: Black Bird puts Jimmy Keene inside a prison he was never meant to survive comfortably.
What is Black Bird about?
Set almost entirely within the walls of a minimum-security facility, this 2022 crime drama follows Jimmy Keene after he agrees to an arrangement with the FBI that trades his own freedom for information. The bureau needs someone who can get close to a fellow inmate suspected of a string of unsolved murders, and Keene is transferred into a maximum-security unit to do exactly that. What follows leans less on action and more on the slow, tense work of building trust with someone dangerous, told through close-quarters dialogue and the claustrophobic geography of prison life. The series moves between Keene's calculated patience and the mounting pressure of a ticking clock, since any deal with federal investigators comes with an expiration date.
About the cast
Taron Egerton leads as Keene, with Paul Walter Hauser and the late Ray Liotta in key supporting roles, alongside Greg Kinnear, Sepideh Moafi, and Laney Stiebing rounding out the cast.
Context & significance
Black Bird arrived as one of several prestige crime limited series built around a single wrongly-adjacent protagonist forced to operate inside institutions rather than against them from the outside. The American production draws its tension from procedure and psychology rather than courtroom theatrics, a register that has become common in true-crime-adjacent television over the past decade. Its critical reception was strongly positive on release, standing out even in a crowded field of prestige crime limited series that year.
Watching Black Bird on Ktime
Black Bird is available on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking viewers a full option either way. The show's page can be browsed freely; watching an episode requires only a free K-Time account login, on a platform built around the Iranian diaspora's Farsi-language viewing habits.