Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Six Schizophrenic Brothers’ on Max, a Compelling but Chintzy Family-Tragedy Doc

Max has had an influx of crime-related docs since it folded in material from Discovery+, and Six Schizophrenic Brothers, the sad story of a family torn apart by mental illness, isn’t one of their best.

SIX SCHIZOPHRENIC BROTHERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A helicopter shot of trees, followed by a shot tracking down Hidden Valley Road, where the Galvin family grew up.

The Gist: The Galvin family looked “picture perfect,” multiple narrators inform us during the first episode of Six Schizophrenic Brothers (although that may depend on whether your perfect picture would include a full dozen children). But over the years, six of the family’s ten brothers would develop schizophrenia, leaving a trail of strife, violence, tragedy, and despair in their wake. It’s an extraordinary story for all the wrong reasons, and the four-part miniseries begins with youngest sibling Mary setting the scene, with background on her career-military father, culture-seeking mother, and the parade of children born between the post-WWII ’40s and the mid-’60s. This is a family that seems to have survivors moreso than members, and the sheer number of children makes the narrative a little diffuse; at times, it’s depending on people a decade-plus younger than siblings to piece together the experiences of departed family members. But the basic arc of the story is tracing the emergence of mental illness in half these siblings’ lives, and exploring how it fractured the family.

What Shows Will it Remind You Of? Though it’s positioned as a modern streaming docu-series, the tragic story and somewhat chintzy visual accompaniments – family photos get simulated burnings and glass-shatterings – bring to mind any number of pieces on mid-to-lower-tier TV newsmagazines like Dateline. It’s also vaguely reminiscent of the recent film The Iron Claw, also about a large family plagued by mental health issues, but without the background in sports or showmanship.

Our Take: It would sound insensitive to describe Six Schizophrenic Brothers as having a rubbernecky, car-wreck appeal, if not for the fact that the miniseries, at least in its first episode, very much depends on those qualities to keep you hooked. It’s one of those true-story docu-series that feels like it’s running its own introductory promo for about half its running time, tantalizing the audience with all of the horrible tragedies that will soon begin to pile up. On that level, it works: The show is short, compelling, and gossipy enough to entice viewers further into the four episodes. But in terms of pure craft, Six Schizophrenic Brothers is pretty cheap stuff, constantly papering over the fact that there isn’t much actual material here to dig into beyond the personal accounts of the surviving participants. Because interviews and family photos are pretty much it, the show resorts to shadowy semi-reenactments, reused footage, and so, so many of those shots where a family photo gets subjected to CGI fire or glass breaking. Moreover, the show sometimes appears to be using the broad idea of schizophrenia, or mental illness in general, as a boogeyman – not something to be explored or understood, but feared for its unstoppable, destructive wrath.

Maybe later episodes deepen this portrait; the first episode feints in that direction when it discusses the repressive non-treatments that schizophrenics and others in need of help often received at the time when the Galvin family was growing up. But to leave these matters hanging as a kind of tawdry tease — something the show also does with some sexual abuse that is mentioned with baffling casualness — looks pretty irresponsible.

Sex and Skin: Nothing titillating; this is a story heavy on abuse.

Parting Shot: Wheelchair-bound oldest brother Donald, the first in the family to show signs of mental illness and who does not appear on camera for the preceding 40 minutes of the first episode, is pushed into the foreground from the shadows, teasing a next-episode interview with a discomfiting emphasis on, again, exploiting our fear of the mentally ill.

Standout Line: One of the younger Galvin siblings, discussing the torment he received at the hands of his older brothers, says something that’s both chilling and broadly applicable in its plainspoken resignation: “You endured what you could, and you avoided what you could.”

Our Call: Six Schizophrenic Brothers is undeniably grabby, but if you’re looking for genuine insight into the difficulties and tragedies of untreated mental illness, free of sensationalist TV tactics, you might want to SKIP IT.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Stream Six Schizophrenic Brothers on Max