Under the Bridge

Under the Bridge is a 2024 American crime drama miniseries created by Quinn Shephard for Hulu. Its eight episodes dramatize the killing of Reena Virk, a fourteen-year-old girl in British Columbia, in 1997. The series draws on Rebecca Godfrey’s nonfiction book Under the Bridge and on Reena: A Father’s Story by Reena’s father, Manjit Virk. It premiered on April 17, 2024, with its final episode released on May 29. Rather than presenting the case solely as a police investigation, it follows the teenagers involved, Reena’s family, and the people trying to understand how the violence happened.

Vritika Gupta plays Reena, whose attempts to find acceptance among local teenagers place her in an increasingly dangerous social circle. In the real case, Reena was attacked by a group of youths near Victoria’s Craigflower Bridge on November 14, 1997. Warren Glowatski and Kelly Ellard subsequently killed her; her body was found in the Gorge Waterway eight days later. The show depicts the police inquiry and the culture of intimidation surrounding the teenagers, while showing how rumors and shifting accounts complicated efforts to establish what occurred. Its depiction of events includes fictionalized scenes and characters, not just material from court records.

Riley Keough portrays Godfrey, who grew up in the Victoria area and returned to investigate Reena’s death for the book. Lily Gladstone plays Cam Bentland, a police officer created for the series rather than a real investigator in the case. Archie Panjabi and Ezra Faroque Khan play Reena’s parents, Suman and Manjit Virk. Javon Walton portrays Warren Glowatski, and Izzy G. plays Kelly Ellard. The parallel perspectives of writer and officer give the adaptation a way to examine both the evidence and the public stories built around Reena.

Godfrey’s book was published in 2005. Glowatski was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999. Ellard was convicted of second-degree murder in 2005, following earlier trials and appeals. Godfrey served as an executive producer on the adaptation but died in 2022, before it premiered. The production preserves her interest in the lives of the accused teenagers without losing sight of Reena or the grief of her parents. Its eight-part structure spends time on Reena’s home life, the group dynamics preceding the assault, and the long aftermath of the crime. Under the Bridge is therefore both an adaptation of a specific Canadian murder case and a dramatization of the reporting that brought it to a wider readership.