Critique: Tidelands (Netflix Series)

*****SPOILERS*****

 

This show was a lot of fun and the videography was stunning. I’ve never watched anything that combines these two factors so vividly. That alone made ‘Tidelands’ worth the watch.

 

Cal, after leaving prison, gets mixed up with the affairs of the Tidelanders (half-human, half-siren hippies) and the business of her brother Augie. (When I first wrote his name down I spelt it ‘Orgy’. A mistake to be sure but considering all the sex in the show...)

            The Tidelanders communally live in the swamp and are considered dirty by the rest of the town. The image probably isn’t helped by them having sex everywhere, all the time. (Bearing in mind no one knows which siren is their mother, they could be shagging their siblings. Yet apparently this isn’t something to be worried about?) What the town doesn’t know is that the Tidelanders can breathe underwater and captivate people with their screams.

            Augie sells drugs supplied by the Tidelanders. The Madam distributes the profits unfairly among her Tidelander subjects so she can buy the relics needed to summon the sirens. Add to the mix a new gang in town, there’s a lot of chaos on the human side of things, too.

            This mess is made more complicated when Corey, a young police officer, tries to figure out what’s going on. He is really cute. Visually, yes, but his character, his behaviour and mind, are cute. He’s close to Cal and is worried for her safety. He doesn’t appear to have a knight-in-shining-armour complex but he’s genuinely concerned for his friend. (Well, they shag, but they care as friends nonetheless.)

 

Cal and Augie’s mum is a… well, insert any awful expletive and you won’t be wrong.

Her mum wants her dead. She even tries to have Cal drowned! She even framed Cal for the death of her father (who Cal adored)! This meant Cal grew up in prison with a mother that wouldn’t even visit her. Utterly cruel. The show is full of criminals and (successful) murderers but Cal’s mum is the one I want taken care of the most.

But of course we discover that Cal is a Tidelander, meaning she has a siren mother, not a human one. Augie’s mum knew this and yet she thought Cal could be drowned? That was odd. Especially as she’s sleeping with a Tidelander herself.

 

The Madam keeps a seer to find the locations of the relics.

The seer is really old so I thought she was a full-human (Tidelanders don’t age). Visions get stronger the longer the seer’s been away from water. But water, it turns out, heals the Tidelanders and keeps them young (old age is just damaged cells that don’t work so well anymore, after all). This was why the seer looks like a shrivelled raisin.

Cal rescues the seer and puts her into the ocean, turning the old woman into a young Tidelander. Yet the ocean doesn’t heal her stab wound? This was odd. Maybe the mechanics of the water-healing have more nuances than I thought but without any sort of explanation it just looks like an oversight that’s convenient for the plot.

 

Cal has a connection with one Tidelander in particular: Dylan.

The Madam sends Dylan to seduce Cal. Cal dismisses him because he lives in a swamp with mosquitoes. Dylan replies with, “I don’t mind being sucked.” Hilarious! It was in that moment that humour sparked in the show.

Dylan jokes about Corey only lasting twenty seconds and Cal responds with something like at least Corey cares, at least it meant something. (That’s all well and good but you could have defended Corey’s endurance even a little bit.) Then straight after this, Cal and Dylan shag. It’s only in the missionary position, and lazy at that (hence boring compared to the rest of the sex in the show!) Surely you could have put more effort into it, Dylan!

 

Like I said before, the videography was cleverly done. Everything was clearly thought about in detail and, as a result, every shot was precise.

The title screen was genius (and thankfully short for a Netflix original!) We see a body rolling in the water. But for each episode, the camera rolls over a different part of the body. Such a creative way to bring something typically boring to life.

The most impressive example is when Cal has a bath. The camera goes vertically when she’s under water so the bath is on the left and the tiles are on the right. You’re sitting there expecting the water to flow out but you know it won’t because it’s your perspective that’s moved, not the world. So playing with our expectations of the world (i.e. gravity) and how it works had a massive impact.

This show has made me much more appreciative of the importance of perfect perspectives whilst filming. I wasn’t ignorant to this before but ‘Tidelanders’ did it so well that I think I’ll be more critical in the future.

 

All-in-all, this was a really enjoyable experience. The main actress was phenomenal and the mystery of the world really draws the audience in. I am impatient as I hope (and prematurely wait) for series two.