Ray Liotta in Apple TV+’s ‘Black Bird’: Watch the Trailer

Apple TV+ has released a trailer for its limited series Black Bird, which features Ray Liotta in one of his final roles.

The six-episode drama, which premieres July 8, centers on Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton), the son of a police officer who’s convicted of a crime and sentenced to 10 years in a minimum-security prison. He’s given a choice by prosecutors, however: Serve the full term without possibility of parole or transfer to a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane and befriend a suspected serial killer (Paul Walter Hauser) in hopes of getting him to confess to more crimes.

Liotta, who died in late May at age 67, plays Big Jim Keene, Jimmy’s father. He’s featured at the beginning of the trailer telling his son, “I never wanted this for you. I wanted a totally different life — a steady paycheck, kids, a family.”

Black Bird creator Dennis Lehane said in a tribute to Liotta that he wrote the part of Big Jim with the actor in mind and it was the “culmination of a lifelong dream to work with [him]” on the series. “And the performance he gave? It was a master class. He wholly embodied a man who realizes that his lifetime of cutting corners and flitting along the edges of corruption have hung an albatross of very bleak options around the neck of his own son,” Lehane wrote. “But as deeply flawed and compromised as the character is, Ray found the nobility in a man who would run into a burning building for that same son and never break his stride.”

Black Bird is based on a true story, as recounted in the book In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption by James Keene and Hillel Levin. Lehane executive produces with Egerton, director Michaël R. Roskam, Richard Plepler (via his Eden Productions); Bradley Thomas, Dan Friedkin and Ryan Friedkin of Imperative Entertainment; Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert of EMJAG Productions; Kary Antholis; and James Keene.

Watch the trailer below.