Hulu’s Mother-Son Mystery ‘Phony’ Mutes Connie Britton’s Charisma Under Visual Effects: TV Review

It’s a shame Hulu shared only half the first season of the streamer’s new comedy-mystery series “Phony” with critics in advance, because so much depends on how the show resolves its central source of suspense. The premise is what one character calls a “reverse cuckoo situation,” or at least a potential one: When Sonny (Sam […] 'The White Lotus' stars Connie Britton and Sam Nivola play a mother and son in the Pacific Northwest in the benignly kooky Hulu mystery-comedy. It’s a shame Hulu shared only half the first season of the streamer’s new comedy-mystery series “Phony” with critics in advance, because so much depends on how the show resolves its central source of suspense.

The premise is what one character calls a “reverse cuckoo situation,” or at least a potential one: When Sonny (Sam Nivola), a high-school student in the Pacific Northwest, gets into a nasty car crash, he wakes up a week later to a surreal nightmare. His mother, Ellen (Connie Britton), has been replaced by someone else, and nobody around him seems to notice. Is he crazy, or is everyone else blind? At first, “Phony” creator Nick Paley, who directed half the season and penned the first couple of episodes,