Lili Reinhart Will Break Your Heart In This Indie TV Series

Filmmaker Cooper Raiff is a low-key indie darling, thanks to his charming leading and directing films like the SXSW Film Festival award winner “S#!thouse” and “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” the latter of which won the Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. If you haven’t seen either of those movies, they’re both worth your time, if only because both films feature Raiff as such a likable, lost twenty-something stuck in arrested development.

At the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Raiff is staying in similar, familiar territory as one-half of the titular duo in “Hal & Harper,” but he enters a new arena by writing and directing this project as an eight-episode TV series that he spent six years writing before getting it financed and shooting the 300-page project in just 50 days. The labor of love comes with all the hearty laughs and heartstring-pulling emotions that made Raiff previous cinematic entries such wonderful experiences. But with eight episodes totaling roughly four and a half hours, Raiff has plenty of time to dig deeper than he ever has before, resulting in a series that is hilarious, harrowing, heartfelt, and therapeutic.

“Hal & Harper” follows the struggling lives of the eponymous brother and sister, played by Cooper Raiff and “Riverdale” regular Lili Reinhart. The siblings are incredibly close to each other, but the tightness between them also holds them back from truly getting close to anyone else. That’s because Hal and Harper shared a traumatic experience with their father (Mark Ruffalo) when they were two and four years old, respectively. This tragedy forced them to grow up too early as their father (Mark Ruffalo) drowned in sorrow. No one in this family has ever fully confronted what’s broken inside them because of this painful past, and the series finds each of them forced to reconcile these complicated feelings, even if it means hurting each other in the process. 

Hal is a college senior who seems to have trouble fully giving himself over to the college experience. Too often he’s caught up in his own head and only concerned with his own problems, which creates complications when meeting girls (such as Havana Rose Liu as fellow college student Abby), puts distance between him and his college roommates (including his best friend played by Christopher Meyer), and weighs significantly on Harper, who has been protecting him since they were children. Meanwhile, Harper’s relationship with her longtime girlfriend Jesse (Alyah Chanelle Scott) is in a weird spot, especially after Harper kisses her boss Audrey (Addison Timlin), making her question the integrity of her relationship. 

Though they’ve both brought each other comfort, Harper seems to be growing increasingly tired of Hal coming over to her house unannounced and spending nights there instead of staying at his own place. Plus, she seems to be perturbed at Hal’s insistence in always making sure their dad is okay, never hesitating to answer his calls or texts. 

Speaking of their father, he’s about to have a baby with his girlfriend Kate (Betty Gilpin). Even though this relationship has held strong for some time, he can’t help but feel guilty about moving forward, putting himself on the verge of a breakdown, especially when the time comes to sell the childhood home that Hal and Harper grew up in, which just so happens to be where they experienced the most painful moment in all their lives. 

What makes “Hal & Harper” immediately compelling, beyond the sharp script and the magnificent performances from the entire ensemble cast, is a bit of a mystery that slowly and tragically unfolds. It’s clear something unfortunate happened to this family a long time ago, but it’s not made perfectly clear until a few episodes in. But even after that mystery is revealed another element of the show’s execution adds a layer of both entertainment and emotion. 

The series cuts back and forth in time as it unfurls the catastrophe that fell upon Hal, Harper, and their father, but once the source of their pain is revealed, we see how it impacted them as children. This is illustrated in continued flashbacks to moments when Hall and Harper are seven and nine years old, but rather than having child actors play the duo as they did when they were two and four, Cooper Raiff and Lili Reinhart play the young versions of themselves (seen above) alongside regular children. The result is both amusing and heartbreaking. Both Raiff and Reinhart play the roles in cute ways, with Raiff being especially adorable as an eager but dorky seven-year-old kid desperately trying to fit in with his classmates. But they also bring an adult awareness to the role, sometimes speaking in sentences beyond their years that feel like they’re tapping into their future personalities.

What makes this more than a gimmick is that there’s a narrative impetus for this creative decision. At one point in “Hal & Harper,” their father admits that the tragedy that has befallen them, and his failure to step up as a parent forced them to grow up too fast, which is why we see them as adult children. It’s clever and sad all at once, especially when Raiff lets uncomfortable silences linger between the younger Hal and Harper, focusing on their innocent but pained faces that are holding back their overwhelming sadness. This is where Reinhart particularly shines, with her deep, bright blue eyes saying so much with the most subtle expression. 

Back in the present day storyline, Reinhart also takes the cake. As she starts to shed the misery she’s been locked in for years, emotions begin to break through, and you can feel her pain even when it’s not at the forefront of any given seen. Ruffalo also sits quietly in his agony, whether it’s in flashbacks or the present day, delivering a performance that’s subdued yet potent. That’s not to say we should sleep on Raiff’s performance. Since he’s not quite reached the same point in confronting his grief, he’s still a little oblivious to his stunted growth, so his development as a character is rightfully a bit slower, but it’s also open-ended for more if the show were to continue. He’s also consistently and easily the funniest part of the show. 

If there’s one shortcoming for “Hal & Harper,” it might be the wheel-spinning that happens occasionally throughout episodes. The series might have benefitted from being trimmed down to six episodes instead of eight, especially when the final episode runs a full hour, as opposed to the average 30-minute runtime of the other episodes. But at the same time, the series never feels like it drags, largely thanks to the mesmerizing performances from Reinhart, Raiff, and Ruffalo (and Gilpin deserves praise too, though she’s in the series as more of a supporting character). Raiff still makes the most out of his runtime, especially when it comes to emotional mileage and wading through depression, but occasionally, it feels like some of those hurdles could have been expedited. 

Even so, it doesn’t detract from the fact that “Hal & Harper” feels like Raiff’s most ambitious and most mature project yet. The filmmaker taps into both comedy and drama in such an authentic way that you can’t help but fall in love with his characters, even with all their flaws on full display. It’s quite a magic trick to make the audience feel empathy for characters who are hurting the people closest to them because they’re not dealing with their own suffering, but Raiff’s characters are so fully realized that they feel like people in our everyday lives, and you still want the best for them.

Raiff has garnered plenty of acclaim on the film festival circuit, and “Hal & Harper” is easily his best work yet, so I hope people start paying attention to him. He’s gifted as both a filmmaker and an actor, even if the latter role hasn’t shown much versatility, and he exquisitely captures such an earnest, powerful part of the human experience, even if that means tapping into the worst kind of pain. It’s the kind of show that just might push you to pull out some of the skeletons in your closet.

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

“Hal & Harper” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. No official premiere date has been announced yet.