Watched on Disney + from January 21st until January 27th Even if Netflix is undoubtedly the top dog in the true crime sector, there are also interesting titles on the other streaming services that tell stories of real crimes. One of these is "Under The Banner Of Heaven", which was already released on Hulu in the USA and has belatedly also reached Disney+ Germany. There, the seven-part crime series based on a non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer should find some fans when familiar elements of the genre meet an unusual setting. More precisely, the series is set in the 1980s and introduces us to a community that follows the Mormon scriptures. A religious community that is mainly found on the American continent and therefore seems rather strange in this country. Personal faith then also plays a major role in the series conceived by Dustin Lance Black. And that even in two respects. On the one hand, there is early suspicion that the murder of the young woman and her small child was religiously motivated. Brenda (Daisy Edgar-Jones), as we learn in interrogations but also through flashbacks, came from a liberal family in which women are allowed to lead their own lives and have their own thoughts. This in turn met with little approval from the Lafferty clan, known as the Kennedys of Utah. Again and again, "Under The Banner Of Heaven" has examples of how little women count in this community. They are somewhere between subjects and pure objects, especially later in the story, when the men invoke divine voices that explicitly urge them to marry many. Dissent is futile; it can even be punished by death. Of course, this is hard stuff for anyone who is even somewhat rational and has arrived somewhere in the modern age. "Under The Banner Of Heaven" does not shy away from exposing the various abysses of the community. There are quite a few characters who are obviously meant to shock and disgust you with their bigoted ways. God's will is quoted very flexibly whenever it suits one's purposes. At the same time, the series is not an attack against the faith itself. While a number of highly fundamental figures are so lost that a substantive discussion with them is pointless, others are more ambivalent. These include Allen (Billy Howle), who has taught his church to turn its back, and above all Pyre (Andrew Garfield), who in the midst of all the gruesome revelations has to decide for himself what his faith actually looks like. At times, however, the intense examination of the subject means that the crime part doesn't really get off the ground. On the one hand, the various detours, which include historical scenes about Mormon founder Joseph Smith, are quite interesting. However, "Under The Banner Of Heaven" gets a little tangled up in the many strands, especially since the Lafferty clan is so extensive that you can lose track of who actually belongs where. The fact that the acting quality fluctuates a little and that some of the ensemble were not really available for nuanced acting makes things even more difficult. Others are all the better for it. Garfield in particular, who received a nomination for this at the Golden Globes, is a very good reason to watch this atmospherically successful crime series as a sensitive policeman caught between the fronts.