Series Review: 'American Crime' is multilayered and politically furious

In an upcoming episode of American Crime, John Ridley's hard-hitting and socially conscious anthology series which opened for a third and final season on M-Net last night, an unseen man tells his audience: "The food on your table comes with a price that you can't see, but somebody has to pay.

Same with the clothes on your back. Same with the things in your house. You have to look at your life and ask: 'What does it cost to live the way I do?' You can choose to ignore that, but what you can't do is be ignorant."

It's an unusual moment in this excellent and politically furious drama. As Ridley has demonstrated with previous seasons of American Crime, he has an axe to grind when it comes to issues of class and justice in the US.

In the first season, a war veteran becomes the victim of a home invasion and the lives of four seemingly unconnected people are forever changed as each one's connection to the crime is revealed in a painstaking investigation that continues in parallel story arcs.

WATCH the trailer for American Crime

The same modus operandi - separate strands all brought together for the finale - was used in the second, which revolved around a case in which privileged athletes at a private school are accused of sexually assaulting a classmate and posting photographs of their crime online.

But, as deftly as Ridley unpacked issues of race and class and sexuality in those earlier seasons, he's never gone so far as to so boldly declare his ambitions with a voice-over literally telling viewers to get out their thinking caps and do a little soul-searching.

Perhaps there's reason enough for the "thesis statement", as one critic called it; there's a lot going on in this third season, which, in addition to the familiar issues of socioeconomic divisions and human rights, explores sex trafficking, the war on drugs, immigration and forced labour.

As usual, Ridley's stories focus on the humdrum details of ordinary people in order to understand the crises in their lives.

In the principal tale, Luis Salazar (Benito Martinez) illegally enters the US from Mexico to search for his missing son, who was last seen working on a tomato farm in North Carolina.

Salazar finds work on that farm as well, but the place is under intense financial pressure, which forces manager Laurie Ann Hesby (Cherry Jones) to introduce cost-cutting measures which, in turn, leads to workplace abuses and a horrific tragedy. Hesby's daughter-in-law, Jeanette (Felicty Huffman), starts digging around to find out what happened.

In other storylines, social worker Kimara Walters (Regina King) struggles to get a 17-year-old Shae Reese (Ana Mulvoy-Ten) to quit her life as a prostitute; a furniture salesman with financial problems, Nicolas Coates (Timothy Hutton), and his wife Clair (Lili Taylor) hire a Haitian woman, Gabrielle (Mickaëlle X. Bizet), to be their son's nanny; and drug addict Coy Henson (Connor Jessup) also lands up working on the Hesby farm.

As these stories converge in what seems an immense narrative sprawl, with so many characters from across the US divide, it becomes clear this is a series of rare brilliance. It seethes with anger, yes, but it's bloody well told.

• This article was originally published in The Times.