@joelkeller Published Feb. 18, 2026, 10:30 a.m. ET Where to Stream: 56 Days Powered by Reelgood More On: erotic thrillers Where To Watch The New Dove Cameron/Avan Jogia Erotic Thriller ’56 Days’: Episode Count, Streaming Info ‘The Housemaid’ Exclusive Clip: Go Behind the Scenes of Amanda Seyfried’s Unhinged Crash Out Scene Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Housemaid’ on VOD, Pulpy Throwback-Thriller Trash Buoyed by Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried ‘The Housemaid’ Comes to Digital, But When ls ‘The Housemaid’ Movie Streaming? The novel 56 Days took place in pandemic-era Dublin. The new Prime Video adaptation moves the story to present-day Boston, taking the pandemic out of the story. Given what we saw during the first episode, we wish we saw some of the isolation-induced tension that the pandemic produced. It might have made for a better story.
Opening Shot: An apartment building in Boston late at night.
The Gist: Someone goes in the building and makes their way to a modern apartment full of artwork. In the bathroom, the person sees a dead body in the bathtub, one that has been artificially decomposed to the point where there isn’t much left but bones. The intruder takes a picture of the body, sets off the fire alarm and leaves.
Cut to 56 days earlier. We see Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron) starting her day, carrying a conspicuous-looking tote with a NASA logo on it to her job as an IT support person. While getting lunch at a supermarket near work, she literally runs into Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia), who seemed to make sure they encountered each other. Outside the supermarket, he waits to introduce himself.
They are both new to Boston, and they seem to hit it off immediately; he asks her out to see an Apollo 11 documentary that night. They go to a speakeasy that he says he read about, but Ciara notices that a waitress says hello to Oliver as if he’s been there before. He admitted that he fibbed a bit, but that blip — and a tense phone call in the bathroom — don’t put a damper on the evening, and they kiss at the end.
Back to “Today;” Boston PD detectives Lee Reardon (Karla Souza) and Karl Connolly (Dorian Missick) are called to the apartment building when the fire department, responding to the alarm, reported an odor that indicated something was decomposing. The cops eventually get a warrant to go in and find the decomposing body in the bathtub; what we find out is that the apartment is the one Oliver has been staying in for his new job. And there are signs that Ciara had moved in.
Back to the early days of Ciara and Oliver, we see some other seemingly romantic and hot-and-heavy encounters. After the first time they sleep together, Ciara is approached on the street by a woman named Jane (Kira Guloien) who seems to know Oliver. Jane tells Ciara that Oliver is “not who you think he is.” Ciara scoffs and goes down to the T; when she returns to her place, we find out that she isn’t who she seems to be, either.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Karyn Usher and Lisa Zwerling and based on the Catherine Ryan Howard novel, 56 Days reminds us of sex-heavy thrillers like The Couple Next Door.
Our Take: 56 Days is a very annoying show, mainly because its storytelling method is designed to purposely keep viewers in the dark despite the fact that there are things that become readily apparent about the story even after the first episode.
Here’s what we know: Ciara and Oliver have a whirlwind… romance? Mutual horniness? We’re not sure what to call it. There are seemingly romantic moments, like when Oliver brings Ciara to an construction site where a huge fan helps her feel like she’s skydiving (long story), and there’s supposed to be sexual chemistry between the two of them. But we have no idea exactly how real it all is.
It’s established pretty early on that Oliver is hiding something; Usher and Zwerling aren’t being subtle in a scene where Oliver receives a new driver’s license with a new last name on it, as well as the menacing stares into middle distance he gives when Ciara’s back is turned. Ciara looks more calculating and less enamored when she’s around Oliver, which makes more sense when we get a glance at what her secrets are. It’s a relationship built around lies, and it feels appropriately transactional from the first time they “bump into” each other.
But every time we start to even slightly engage in the story, we shift to the day when the body is found and Reardon and Connolly’s banter-filled partnership. It seems to move very slowly, with a lot of pointless scenes, just to put off viewers finding out who it is that’s being dissolved in that bathtub. It feels artificial, especially because of the fact that both detectives are being given expositional dialogue about their lives that we don’t care one whit about.
Performance Worth Watching: Dove Cameron makes Ciara just mysterious enough as she gets to know Oliver to let viewers know that she’s not as naive as she lets on.
Sex And Skin: Yes to both, and we expect to see a lot of it during this series.
Parting Shot: A flashback to when Ciara walked into that supermarket, where we find out that she was definitely there for more than just getting a salad for lunch.
Sleeper Star: We’re still not sure if Karla Souza and Dorian Missick’s characters, Dets. Reardon and Connolly, are there as comic relief or if their characters have more to contribute than being bantering cops. We’re not sure we care either way.
Most Pilot-y Line: The whole fan scene is irritating because it’s supposed to feign something romantic but could have been cut out without affecting the first episode at all.
Our Call: SKIP IT. 56 Days is supposed to show the erotic chemistry between two people that led to a wild affair then a gruesome murder. But the affair feels artificial and the investigation of the murder feels excruciatingly drawn out, and the timeline jumping makes the show tiring to watch.
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Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
