How Under the Bridge reintroduces us to the story of Reena Virk

The new series Under the Bridge dramatizes the story of Reena Virk, a 14 year-old girl who was murdered by her peers in Victoria, B.C. in 1997.

Today on Commotion, journalist Angela Sterritt and culture critics Rad Simonpillai and Aparita Bhandari join guest host Amil Niazi to discuss why this series is so gripping, and whether the true crime format did justice to one of Canada's most harrowing murder cases.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Amil: Let's talk a bit about the way that Reena and her family were presented in Under the Bridge. What did you think about that portrayal?

Aparita: To learn more about the family — the opening scenes with Reena calling out to her mamaji, or her uncle, and to see the parents — I had no idea they were Jehovah's Witnesses, or any of that kind of tension. There is a frequent amount of tension often amongst immigrant parents and their kids. When you're living a diasporic life, it adds to the usual teenage angst that one goes through. So one had a sense of that. They even are able to bring in some of the further backstory of immigrating to beautiful British Columbia in one of the episodes, so that really rounded out Reena for me.

That sense of being an outsider, I remember that growing up, and I can continue to see that amongst young people today. I'm a mother of a teenage daughter in a much more accepting society, but nevertheless it's that age, right? You feel that you're on the outs a lot of times. So it was really quite gratifying, actually, to see that fulsome picture.

Amil: Rad, one of the most consistent criticisms of any true crime portrayal is how much it tends to humanize the perpetrators. How did you feel about that dynamic, and the portrayal that's happening outside of Reena Virk and her family?

Rad: I appreciated this show. I think it empathized not just with the killers. I think it did give them the right amount of empathy in a lot of circumstances. But also I think the portrayal of Reena and her family felt extremely nuanced to me in the sense where I could see the gulf that I had with my parents in that relationship. I think there's something universal in how it was captured in terms of Reena being a child who was just trying to find her community and will go to the least offensive of the groups, the ones who will bully her the least, right? The fact that it captured those nuances is incredible.

I think a real measure of how well this show did that for Reena and her family is when you get to the point where Reena makes an accusation against her own dad after being goaded. The fact that you can criticize the parents for the moments where they did not listen to their child, for them being so set in their ways that they're not hearing their child, the fact that you could criticize Reena for being so manipulated but you still have empathy for her and you can understand what pushed her to that decision, I think this show kind of pulled it off in terms of us empathizing with Reena.

Amil: Angela, what do you think about the portrayal of the teen girls especially in this series? Because I remember it seemed to be the first time we woke up to the idea that the type of bullying we had only attributed to young boys at that time was being perpetrated by young girls, too, and it seemed to shift the conversation around bullying.

Angela: The acting was excellent, especially from the teens. I was really taken by all of them. I grew up in a group home as well, so I was really interested to see how that was being portrayed, and I thought they did a really good job. I would have liked to see a little bit more insight…. You kind of get a glimpse [that] these aren't just teenage rebels. That's kind of what was happening at the time, right, was this tough love element. We didn't understand the trauma that children, teens, adults go through. We just kind of cast them away with "troubled teen" behaviors that came from who knows where, and they wanted to break the rules. We didn't talk about trauma, but you know with the gift of modernity that these kids are going through a lot of things. So I thought they did a really good job at that.

I really wish they would have talked about race more. We see a little bit of tiptoeing into that in terms of Reena's uncle and her dad, and I thought they did a really good job at showing how different generations respond to, for example, a lack of police action. But that was what was happening at the time. No one talked about race or racism at all, [with] the level of erasure that was happening at the time.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.