Streamers get anxious if they don’t have a show on a wellness island getaway ever-ready. After Nicole Kidman’s best-left-forgotten Hulu show Nine Perfect Strangers (a second season out this week), Netflix’s Sirens leaps into the mix. One of the key pleasures of these series is to watch rich people come undone, though you’re aware that their embedded class critiques are window-dressing. It works when characters are snarky in their delusions. With Sirens, showrunner Molly Smith Metzler plays with expectations, teasing you to anticipate the direction in which the trajectory is headed, until it pulls the rug from underneath. Adapting from her own play Elemeno Pea, Metzler bases Sirens around two sisters sundered by a mysterious high-end socialite, Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore).
Simone (Milly Alcock) works as her personal assistant, living on the Kell estate in a secluded island. Moore does the cool haute air of elite society ladies. Her speech is inflected as that of silk-cradled women obsessed with control and order. Moore’s projection is central to the enigma, suppositions, suspicions around Michaela. She’s not exactly a standard-issue ice queen. Michaela shows care and nurtures whom she gauges as wounded. She sees through souls, eyes locked. Moore is pitch-perfect, wielding a therapeutic voice with the persona of someone neatly wiping out a blood trail.
Not a speck should look out of place in the Kell mansion. She has Simone play the bad cop and set things right. There’s disruption when Simone’s sister Devon (Meghann Fahy) lands on the island, seeking to remind her of family duties. Devon is instantly unsettled by her sister’s deep trust in her boss. Toxicity laces this equation. The place itself looks forbidding to Devon. Awash in Stepford-Wives-like pastel uniformity, Michaela seems to be a cult leader. She has an aviary preserve with peculiar rituals. There are whispers also of Michaela having bumped off her millionaire husband’s previous wife and snaking her way into being the mistress of the estate. Devon wants to poke around but Michaela has made her staff sign NDAs. Simone is oblivious, worshipping Michaela, or Kiki, as she calls her. Having emerged from humble roots, she’s only happy and grateful to have a job. Devon insists on Simone to look around, see how working for Michaela has left her completely isolated. Simone has no social life, no friends. She’s unbothered. All that matters to her is being able to work for Michaela, be in her intimate circle. Simone is too invested in ensuring her boss’ routines stay intact, while she dumps her needs at the wayside.
Sirens highlights how devotion and obsession can be driven to dangerous ends. Simone is stuck in a loop of pleasing her boss, her days spent in securing Michaela’s approval on every little thing. In this chase, she’s become an automaton, her pleasures numbed. Devon’s sudden arrival shakes up the scene, rattling Simone’s perfectly struck composure. Fahy balances chaos with precise hurt. Simone now dreads possible stains on her competence. She’s wary of even being associated with her “hot mess” sister. Devon has multiple DUIs to her name. Michaela is surprised. Despite the intimacy with her, Simone never spoke of having a sister. It is a past she’s running from, relationships she avoids. Simone hates their father, an alcoholic for the longest time who was barely present in their lives as a parent. With their mother supposedly killed in a car accident, Simone grew up in foster homes. Devon is determined that Simone take some responsibility. Sirens ties parental abandonment, children’s resentment and a plea for forgiveness into a narrative web of deception. Suddenly, the fog lifts. Characters flash their vulnerable, broken selves, wrapped under elaborate performance. Who exactly is in charge here? The show keeps redrawing lines of authority.
As consumed Simone is in Michaela’s empire, Devon has spent her entire life looking after their dementia-slipping father. Simone urges her to leave immediately but Devon is sure in her resolve: she will leave only with her sister. However, Michaela has her claws too deep in Simone. She can manipulate the latter to any end that favors her.
Sirens toys with perceptions, how you imagine certain people versus reality with its inherent power differentials. Cloaked in Simone’s constant blind service is desire for one-upmanship. Much of her wants and her voice stay cleverly concealed. Alcock taps a tightly shielded interior along with just a glimpse of secret energy. Sirens delves into hiding and false projections with an uncanny layer. So much of it is about what one keeps repressed, a glaze of performance one puts on, knots of trauma driving lightning decisions. Sirens propels itself forward on its trio of actresses, each covering scars which gradually illuminate power games. The more the show unravels, the more surprisingly affecting it gets.
Sirens’ glossy façade juxtaposes with genre subversions slowly curling up. It’s a tricky tonal tight rope, shifting from campy to sincere emotion. Some of it does seem to lose its edge amidst the dynamic plotting. A switch from farce to sober, unexpectedly layered drama, with characters expanding beyond initial estimate, jars more than neatly clicking into place. Nevertheless, there are quite few thrills to be found as Sirens darts through questions of control vis-à-vis men and women.
