Last week here in Manhattan The Film Experience was invited to attend a very exclusive special screening and dinner for Netflix's new series Bloodline. How did they know we had a thing for Kyle Chandler and Sissy Spacek? Even more mysterious: How did they know about our deep abiding love for Norbert Leo Butz and Katie Finneran, two Tony-winning Broadway musical comedy sensations who are surprising but great choices to play husband & wife in a swampy thriller / family drama / murder mystery fusion.
The storyline concerns the Raeburn family, a rich Southern Florida clan who own and run a very lucrative beachfront hotel. In the premiere episode the parents (Sam Shephard and Sissy Spacek) are celebrating an anniversary and home come there four adult children played by Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Norbert Leo Butz, and their eldest and most troubled prodigal son Ben Mendelsohn. (Mendelsohn's management team might want to look into a curveball next time he takes a role because seeing his face is now already shorthand for TROUBLE!)
the prodigal son (Ben Mendelsohn) and the only family member who is thrilled to have him back, his Mom (Sissy Spacek)
So naturally the reunion/celebration doesn't go so smoothly since nothing does when Mendelsohn is involved. Or when large families reunite onscreen come to think of it. Soon everyone is wringing their hands and fretting about (mostly) the same thing if not quite breaking out into a chorus of "How do you solve a problem like Maria Ben Mendelsohn?"
Bloodline is from the creative team behind Damages and even if you don't know that going in, it's easy to suss it out. Bloodline doesn't feel quite as structurally show-offy as Damage did with its elaborate flash-forwards and backwards but the DNA is there. Perhaps future episodes will use that constantly as Damages did but I hope not since that once semi-fresh device has been worn increasingly thin by literally hundreds of hours of episodic television on all networks over the past few years. The show also shares that retired series' dour moods, brutal mysterious crime to be solved (two of them already in episode 1), and people who basically telegraph or baldly state that they can't be trusted even though you want, desperately, as an audience member, for someone to be.
The final clue that this was from the team behind Damages was a short Q&A with the team afterwards including Chandler & Butz (who mostly talked about why they signed on and the insane working conditions in Florida with swamps and mosquitos and alligators and whatnot). Afterwards Tate Donovan and Glenn Close both showed up for dinner! Close was a very late arrival, obviously freshly showered direct from her Broadway show's curtain call a few blocks away (and very popular with the actors and creative team. Hug it out, celebrities!) I spotted one 20something female dinner guest taking one of those "sneak" selfies that was really an excuse to have Glenn Close in frame while pointing at her with gaping 'OMG!' glee.
Here's the trailer.
Thankfully it is not filled with spoilers other than revealing the show's tagline...
We're not bad people. But we did a bad thing."
...which is already on the poster. Chandler narrates the show and he's as wonderfully engaging, nuanced, and instantly empathetic as ever. When this confession arrives it comes with something like seismic force and in the nick of time, too. I was beginning to wonder where the hell all the languid moodiness was going... and I'll admit I was a bit tired of the first episode's intense focus on Mendelsohn when all the other characters were more intriguing if only because they weren't such easily readable 'types'. But wow does episode one ever end well. It's a solid hour of careful place-setting only to see the table violently upended.
My only worry from the first episode is whether it will lack anything like a sense of humor (which can really enrich dark dramas if employed judiciously) and whether the focus will remain so tight on the brothers (who get the bulk of screen time). It'll be very disappointing if actors as good as Spacek and Cardelinni and Finneran don't get more to do. I'll definitely be watching Episode 2 and 3 (and 4...5...6...7... you know how binge-watching goes) depending on how or whether they flesh the large ensemble out.