Review: 'Phony' is a captivating mystery with Connie Britton as an altered mom. Or is she?

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Young adult stories come in every imaginable flavor, and flavor combination, and several are present in “Phony,” premiering Tuesday on Hulu.Based on the four episodes (of eight) out for review, I am all in with this show, but as Doris Day so memorably sang, the future’s not ours to see.Created and directed in part by Nick Paley (“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”), it’s a mystery driven by an uncanny event, with the beating heart of a high school dramedy, in the sense that what is dramatic about adolescence is at the same time comical.

(Given time.) Temperamentally, it’s closer to “Freaks & Geeks” or “Dazed and Confused” than, say, “Stranger Things,” but I also wrote “Robert Altman” in my notes.To begin, we are in some mountainous slice of small-town Pacific Northwest, where the Canadian tax breaks call American producers across the 49th parallel and the landscape presses in from all sides.(A reference to Lewis & Clark College suggests the story is set in Oregon, but I can’t remember any other clues; also, it isn’t important.) It’s an ordinary world wrapped in mystery and sometimes mist, but it’s the ordinariness that gives the show its power as much as, or more than, the mysteriousness.Sonny Cooke (Sam Nivola, from the third season of “White Lotus”) attends Delby High, where his mother, Ellen (Connie Britton), is the principal.

This would be a nightmare for many teens, but for Sonny and Ellen, it’s more of a dream, as the two are unusually (which is not to say perversely) close.(There is no father in the picture, nor is one even mentioned.) He operates in the corridors as a kind of unofficial lieutenant to his mother, bringing cheer and care to his fellow students, spreading sunshine all over the place.

This is a little strange, but he is not accounted a ...