Perhaps all of streaming television is one giant conspiracy to persuade us not to dream of beach town living. They’re the murder capitals of TV, these towns, with their craggy shores and generational secrets, their prodigal sons and nosy outsiders. Stay away from the water! Reject those quaint houses and majestic vistas! This is not a place of honor!
“The Survivors,” a six-episode Australian murder mini-series on Netflix, is a tasty, polished instantiation of the form. Based on the book by Jane Harper, the coastal misery here takes place in Tasmania, where Kieran (Charlie Vickers) is returning home to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the night of a terrible storm. Kieran himself nearly drowned, and his brother and a friend died trying to save him.
Those were not the only two people who died that night. A teen girl, Gabby, also disappeared and presumably drowned, but she is rarely acknowledged in all the public grieving. In the present day, a young woman who was conducting her own investigation into Gabby’s death turns up dead, and now a whole other mystery is crying out to be solved.
Though it covers a lot of familiar angles, “The Survivors” outshines most of its brethren. The relationships here are knotty, the characters multidimensional in intriguing, moving ways. People can be both wonderful and cruel, loving but maybe not loving enough, loyal but also dishonest.
Mia (Yerin Ha), Kieran’s wife, was Gabby’s best friend, and now she isn’t sure how to relate to Gabby’s bereft mom and sister, who disagree with each other about the need to investigate Gabby’s death further. Kieran’s mother, Verity (Robyn Malcolm), struggles with grief and blame — and care taking. Kieran’s father, Brian (Damien Garvey), has worsening dementia, and when the police grill him about what he might have witnessed, his recollections are fractured, mixed up.
But who doesn’t struggle with painful memories? Doesn’t everyone have something he or she wants to forget? There’s plenty of sorrow to go around, even as the characters argue about who has it the worst, desperate for their suffering to be beheld, to be legitimized.
The show picks up as it goes, and its plot lines nest like Russian dolls, giving the story a real sense of heft and potency.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
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