It’s summer and that can only mean one thing.
Prepare yourselves for a slew of murder mystery dramas, family dramas, coming-of-age dramas and sibling dramas, all slavishly focused on fabulously wealthy people in pastel pullovers and flimsy dresses, filmed somewhere cold and bright, but on a beach or windy headland that doubles for the Hamptons.
At first glance, Sirens, which premiered May 22 on Netflix, seems cut from the same cloth, if not for its stellar cast (featuring Julianne Moore, Milly Alcock, Meghann Fahy, and Kevin Bacon), and its meatier subject matter — women, power, class, identity — and the fact it was actually a play before being adapted into a tight 5 episodes featuring virtually no empty space and zero superfluous characters.
You may even be 2-3 episodes in before you even realize your expectations have been cleverly subverted by a darkly comedic study in human nature, family trauma, and sibling dynamics. But of course, by then it will all be too late, and you’ll see Sirens for what it really is — a sharply observant debut deserving of a second season.
The show opens with Fahey’s Devon, a recovering alcohol and sex addict struggling to hang on to her sobriety in the face of her father’s recent dementia diagnosis. Devon has worked a series of dead-end jobs to put her younger sister Simone (Alcock) through Harvard, although Simone, now a successful PA, seems to want to have very little to do with her.
When a DUI lands Devon a night in jail, and she sends Simone a text message cry for help only to be sent an edible arrangement in lieu of her actual presence, it proves the final straw. Dragging the comically large basket in tow, Devon sets out to track down her sis in the Hamptons, and shove the basket where the sun don’t shine.
Simone, Devon discovers, has been living a seemingly gilded life as the live-in PA to billionaire raptor conservationist Michaela Kell (Moore), and carrying on a secret relationship with Ethan (Glenn Howerton) a much older man who knows nothing of the sisters’ past lives in the foster care system, the true extent of their childhood trauma, or how well they both hide it.
Michaela (or “Kikki” as Simone is allowed to call her), is married to hedge fund billionaire Peter Kell (Kevin Bacon) and has a tribe of wealthy acolytes in her thrall. With Peter absent most of the time, Michaela and Simone have developed what is an obvious co-dependant relationship, with Simone, part lap dog, part daughter, part confidante, but still strictly ‘the help’ so completely under her spell she even accepts chewed gum from Michaela’s mouth to freshen her breath. In another scene, she sexts Peter on Michaela’s behalf.
Boundaries! What boundaries?
For Devon, what was supposed to be a furious castigation now becomes a mission to free her sister from a cult.
What unfolds is a darkly humorous and outrageous series of events that plunge all three women into a battle of wills in which class, power, identity, and family bonds all take center stage. But who is the victim, and who is the villain?
Wryly observant and wittily engaging over ever outright hilarious, Sirens at times treads a fine line between the poignant and the preposterous. In one episode Devon, ejected from the mansion, sneaks back in the dead of night by scuba diving from a yacht. Security cameras pick her up rolling furtively and clumsily across the manicured lawn like Captain Kirk in an episode of Star Trek.
In another scene, when one of Michaela’s raptors dies by colliding with a window pane, Devon mistakes a vision of a distraught Michaela clutching her bloodied bird as evidence of a cult ritual.
However, with just 5 tightly written episodes in which to deliver its message, the show simply doesn’t have time to come off the rails. There are too many unexpected twists, stand out character moments, and tightly plotted storylines to get across for any one moment to be wasted.
Like one of Michaela’s raptors, Sirens soars with feather-light grace, blending drama, satire, and comedy into a razor-sharp finale that might just catch you unawares.
The series is adapted for the screen by Molly Smith Metzler from her play Elemeno Pea, with Colin McKenna and Bekah Brunstetter.
Sirens is streaming on Netflix now.
