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We need to talk about beards. In Under the Banner of Heaven (Disney+), witnesses report that four suspicious men leaving the scene of a double murder are all bearded. If this were Portland or Shoreditch, where beards are not just lavish but artisanal, that would make all men suspects, but this is Mormon-heavy Utah, where searching for bearded men is less like looking for needles in haystacks and more like trying to find ZZ Top at an Osmonds gig.
Andrew Garfield as Detective Jeb Pyre is an ideal Mormon. He is clean-shaven, soberly suited, eschews coffee and when his partner, newly arrived from the Sodom and Gomorrah that is Las Vegas, offers him some curly fries, he snaffles them furtively under the desk. When the latter cusses, Pyre gently reproves him. He’s soft-spoken and soft-skinned, most likely moisturising more rigorously than Mormon orthodoxy recommends.
