Here’s your choice: Serve a 10-year jail sentence, or go free after transferring to a maximum-security prison and getting a potential serial killer to confess. That seed feeds the drama of Black Bird, Dennis Lehane’s latest screen adaptation.

“The thing I locked in on was the sense of being dropped into a type of hell and having to navigate without a map,” says Lehane of when charismatic drug dealer Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton, above) befriends quietly menacing Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser).

Keene faces his own demons, and the regrets of a fall from the high life offered by his dad (Ray Liotta, in his final TV role). As the story unfolds, many gray areas emerge. Says Lehane, “I don’t think too many people are just straight-out evil.”

Black Bird, Series Premiere, Friday, July 8, Apple TV+