Better Late Than Never: Sirens

 

At the end of the 2010s one of my favorite small joys of TV was Freeform's The Bold Type, a gentle drama of sisterhood at a fictional women's magazine that featured three of the most fullest rounded female characters I'd seen to that point during the decade. It lasted five seasons, which was just long enough for it not to get stale and like all great series I've taken an interest in the performers who were part of the cast.

By far the most successful actress in terms of the kind of roles she's gotten since the show ended in the summer of 2021 was Meghann Fahy. Her next major role was in Season 2 of The White Lotus and I was gratified for the fact that in the opening teaser they made it clear she was going to make it through the show alive. Yes her character, like almost every guest had no redeeming characteristics, but my heart would have cracked just a little if her character had been murdered by 'the gays' rather then Jennifer Coolidge. While I did think the Emmys went overboard with recognition in both supporting acting categories for the show in Season 2, I won't deny I was still happy Fahy got nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress.

After the strike ended she's been even busier having major supporting roles in two different Netflix series. In The Perfect Couple she ended up dying at a Nantucket wedding (she couldn't escape it this time) at the hands of Dakota Fanning. Then this past April she was one of the three female leads at the center of Sirens an even more limited series that received some acclaim but was not considered as highly in some circles as Disclaimer or Dying for Sex. Indeed many thought that if any of the three leads had a chance of a nomination it would be Julianne Moore. So Fahy's nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series earlier this month was arguably the biggest shock in the Limited Series category this year.

Just as last time I was happy for Fahy but I wasn't sure if I was going to watch Sirens – it was only nominated for four other Emmys and was not nominated for Best Limited Series. Still I had some time free earlier this week and when I saw that there were only five hour long episodes in the entire show, I figured what the hell. That's only one episode longer than Adolescence; worse case scenario I can get it done in a week and I'll basically be covered for all major limited series nomination in a few weeks' time.

So now after having watched the first two episodes I have some thoughts. First, the Emmys were clearly right when it came to not nominated Sirens for Outstanding Limited Series. It is not nearly at the level of Netflix's major nominees in this category Monsters and Adolescence (though I have reason to like it more than the latter which I'll get too) and it doesn't even come close to The Penguin or Dying for Sex. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have virtues to it, even though you could be forgiven for seeing some elements of the familiar in it.

Fahy plays Devin, a twenty-something who lives in Buffalo and who is clearly struggling to survive. We first meet her when she has been bailed out of lock-up for what we will later learn to be a DUI. She is also a very sexual woman, willing to give oral sex to a ferry man when she can't smoke and hooks up with a man at a bar at the end of the first episode. But she's also facing some very painful struggles. Her father (Bill Camp, very different from his Emmy nominated performance in Presumed Innocent) is suffering from dementia and needs long-term care. Devin has been trying to talk with her younger sister Simone for months when it comes to making hard decision about his well-being. (It doesn't help that even in his dementia her father still clearly favors Simone more.) Then getting home from jail, she finds an edible arrangement from her sister on her doorstep. It is the last straw and she finds the address card on and takes the fruit basket back to it with the purpose of finding Simone.

Simone (Milly Alcock, unrecognizable from their nominated work in House of The Dragon) has reinvented herself on the far edge of upstate as the personal assistant of Michaella Kells. She's been having a summer romance with one of her husband's friends, a man considerably older than her and who we will soon learn has a habit of doing this. She essentially has made herself Michella's second in command running the entire household with complete authority and disregarding the entire help's demands. The help has no respect for her and has a text chain where they privately mock every bit of her and then deny to her faces that they're doing. Simone has so reinvented herself that when Devin shows up on her doorstep she does everything in her power to hide her from Michella and makes it very clear she has no interest in her life. We learn very quickly that she's told countless lies to get this job, including that her sister existed. She also has no interest in helping Devin or listening to her problems about her father.

Devin very quickly realizes something is wrong with her sister. We learn she dropped out of school for her to get into Yale and that Simone has essentially refused to follow through. Simone very clearly has psychological issues; in the second episode Devin asks her sister if she['s been taking her meds and even before Devin finds a cache of full pill bottles in a drawer in Simone's room, we know she's been off them for a while.

It's clear from the moment Michella and Devin interact that the relationship is far more than assistant/employer Devin is clearly sexually attracted to Michaelle and when events traumatize Michella Simone is more than willing to share her bed with her. It's not clear after two episodes of Michaella is aware of this or is actively leading Simone on. Indeed two episodes in we're still not sure about the mistress of the house.

Michaella, as you might have guessed, is played by Moore who continues to add to her growing resume of brilliant female roles in limited series, moving on from last year's Mary and George. This role is quite a contrast from Mary Villiers, watching Michaella you get a sense that this is just another one of those frail millionaires who is using her wealth for charitable purposes as a mirror to one's self. The Cliff House is ostensibly a wildlife refuge for raptors but it's obvious almost immediately how cult like it is, with Kella leading a chant at the end of every meeting 'hey hey' which everyone echoes. And the fact that the most recent peregrine falcon she raises kills itself against the glass of her room is a metaphor in itself. All that said, you spend much of the first episode thinking Michaella is less a leader of said cult then a member – until you start to think of certain stories which I will not reveal.

Michaella's husband is Peter (Kevin Bacon) who seems to just tolerate his wife's frantic behavior around the house rather than be a member. He thinks she and Simone are too close, he doesn't like having to go through all the theatrics of the publicity shots for her work, and it's not clear if he's happy in this marriage any more. He also is the only person in the house who actually treats the staff with respect and dignity, something neither woman is willing to do. He has two grown children who are out of the house these days  - and Michaella is his second wife. But what happened to the first Mrs. Kell? No one is saying.

All of this, as I said before, is familiar: in fact it's pretty close to the exact formula of The Perfect Couple. But what makes this by far a more watchable and enjoyable series is that where Perfect was only about the wealthy and the bubble they put up, Sirens is far more about the staff and workers then we ever saw in the latter. Fahy played an outsider in both shows but in Sirens she plays someone who looks at this world and sees it not as something to aspire too but as something that is very much as something to be rescued from. She knows Simone isn't all right despite all of her arguments to the contrary and she needs to help her, if only to save her from herself.

Of the three lead actresses having watched the first two episodes I'm convinced the Emmys were correct when they nominated Fahy. Her work is far closer to what we once saw of her in The Bold Type, only this time she's even further down the food chain and is no closer to getting out. She's proud of the messy clothes she wears and has no problem testing the limits of the 'generosity' of the Kells. And when Devin agrees to clean up and look better for the purposes of the estate, every step of the way she says: 'Fuck you, Michaela'. She may clean up nice but she's still the same woman.

It's a measure of how at this point Fahy is such a great actress that in what is her first major confrontation with Michaela one on one in the second episode, she manages to draw all your attention. Michaela truly thinks because she is wealthy and privileged she has all the cards but Devin is steadfast and is willing to risk prison for her sister. Moore has the same strength in all of her characters in Michaella to be sure but to this point Devin is the only person who isn't willing to kowtow to her and it clearly unnerves her.

I have to say that of the three female leads the one I think the Emmys overlooked is Alcock for her work as Simone. Every moment watching her, you see someone who has clearly invented a version of herself and what matters to her most is how she is seen by it. It's telling that when we meet her she cares more about disappointing her boss than her sister and that what finally causes her façade to crack is when a secret she has spent the last several months doing everything to hide is revealed to the Kells. She spends most of the second episode hiding in a fetal position and it isn't until Devin is brought to her that we see the real Simone -  and the much more caring side of Devin.

Now to be clear Sirens is far from perfect. Apparently it's based on a play rather than a book or a film and you can tell the way that Nicole Kissell and her writers have been trying to expand it that there are elements that are clearly stretched beyond believability. Its set during basically one weekend and I suspect that in the original it was entirely set on the Cliff House. That's why as good as some of the acting is, you can't escape the fact that so much of it is based on conversations on a single set.

Also tonally its very erratic, shifting from satire to farce to dark drama so rapidly you can get a case of vertigo. I'm not yet sure whether this is an eat-the-rich versus working class story, a murder mystery in waiting or a Stepford Wives like satire and it seems to be trying to be all three in the same episode which is very hard to maintain.

Still I have to say at the end of the day I prefer Sirens to Adolescence at the same point in their runs. I know that this will be considered heresy and I'm not saying the latter didn't deserved the recognition it got. But as I said in both my reviews of the latter series I think Adolescence was more about being the kind of show that was pretentious in so many ways but the subject matter was so topical that many of my fellow critics tended to overlook that it didn't have anything original to say about it. By contrast Sirens never forgets to be entertaining and interesting even when it has odd tonal shifts, and because it's not really about anything, it can just be fun which is, frankly, something so many dramas and limited series don't allow themselves to be any more. For all I know Sirens may turn out to be nothing more than a guilty pleasure when its all over. But you can't have that without 'pleasure' and this show is.

My score: 3.75 stars.