The acclaimed Apple TV+ crime series Truth Be Told is back for its third season, adapting the novel Are You Sleeping by Kathleen Barber. Featuring the return of Academy Award-winning actor Octavia Spencer as true crime journalist and podcast host Poppy Parnell, the show is just as dark and thrilling as ever as Poppy tackles a new mystery haunting California's Bay Area. With its impressive ensemble cast, engrossing narrative, wider scope, and bigger twists and turns than before, Truth Be Told continues to be one of the more criminally overlooked original series on Apple TV+.
In Season 3, a string of disturbing disappearances involving young women and teenagers around the Bay Area draws Poppy's attention, leading her to conduct a thorough examination of the unsolved mysteries as the police remain baffled. Two of the disappearances are from a local Oakland high school, with Poppy meeting the school's principal Eva (Gabrielle Union), whose unusual but effective style makes her a controversial figure among the students' parents. With Poppy particularly and personally struck by the growing number of disappearances, she is especially driven to find out what is happening to the girls and stop any more victims, even as it has her collide with the city's mayoral campaign.
Truth Be Told has always unfolded at a confident and deliberate pace, repositioning its returning characters and bringing in new ones while setting the stage for a new grisly mystery. Just as the preceding season had the murder mystery fall uncomfortably close to home for Poppy through her friendships, this season has Poppy's family friends impacted by the serial disappearances. This gives Spencer plenty of room to play as an actor, which she takes full advantage of, confident whenever Poppy is on the job and more vulnerable than ever in her quiet moments with her father Shreve (Ron Cephas Jones).
Just as with Aaron Paul and Kate Hudson in previous seasons, Truth Be Told gives Spencer a good scene partner to bounce off and keep the audience guessing, with Union more than up to the task this season. While Union does provide viewers with some of the big twists and turns this season between her scenes with Spencer, Jones and Katherine LaNasa, Poppy's longtime podcast producer Noa, also get strong character moments in the season premiere. Truth Be Told is a top-to-bottom expert cast, elevating and enhancing Spencer's lead performance and deepening their character relationships three seasons in.
Given the stakes and subject matter this time around, Season 3 does feel like the tonally darkest Truth Be Told has been to date, but like its protagonist, the show is ready to ask the harder questions and venture into more lurid areas. By the end of the premiere, the gravity and personal nature of the mystery become abundantly and tragically clear, hinting at an illicit odyssey for Poppy as the season progresses. This is all done as respectfully as possible but positions Poppy on a road that will have her confront her own inner heart of darkness.
Each season of Truth Be Told has steadily improved upon the season that came before it, and this remains true for its third outing. The ensemble cast continues to effectively gel together while Spencer finds new emotional depths to Poppy as she takes on the Bay Area's most sinister and twisting mysteries. As much an increasingly complex character-driven drama as it is a riveting crime procedural, Season 3 is poised to take the plunge and put Poppy through the wringer like never before.
The Season 3 premiere of Truth Be Told is available to stream now, with new episodes released Fridays on Apple TV+.