“Dawson’s Creek” and “The Vampire Diaries” creator Kevin Williamson has returned to television with Netflix‘s latest drama, ‘The Waterfront.” The series is inspired by Williamson’s father, who was a fisherman and began smuggling drugs in the 1980s to make ends meet. Set in the fictional coastal town of Havenport, North Carolina, the show follows the Buckleys, an affluent family who’ve dominated Havenport’s fishing industry for generations. However, the Buckleys are nothing like their “well-to-do” and put-together facade. Messy, violent and rife with secrets and lies, “The Waterfront” is a highly entertaining series about four people willing to do anything to hold on to their legacy, even if it means turning on each other in the process.
The eight-episode series opens in the middle of the night in open waters. Two men smuggling drugs using a Buckley boat are intercepted by gunmen and thrown overboard. From there, “The Waterfront” introduces the family. As he recovers from two near-fatal heart attacks, patriarch Harlan Buckley (Holt McCallany) hasn’t halted his drinking and philandering, and has been too distracted to keep a close eye on the family businesses. Resultingly, it has been up to his long-suffering wife, Belle (Maria Bello), and son, Cane (Jake Weary), to keep the family’s financially strained restaurant and fishing house from going under. Unfortunately, the mother and son can’t agree with each other, or with Harlan, on how to fulfill their mounting debt.
While Belle is trying to secretly move forward with a plan to develop some family land (against Harlan’s wishes), Cane has entered the drug-running business. However, heroin smuggling is the very same enterprise Harlan worked desperately to extract himself from decades earlier. Additionally, Cane’s sister Bree (Melissa Benoist), a recovering addict, is desperately trying to claw her way back into the family’s inner circle after being relegated to the fringes after her latest relapse caused her to lose custody of her teenage son, Diller (Brady Hepner).
When Cane’s men are killed during an ill-fated drug run, and Sheriff Clyde Porter (Michael Gaston) and DEA Agent Marcus Sanchez (Gerardo Celasco) begin sniffing around, he is forced to call on his father to clean up his mess. What happens next is a shocking maze of shady business dealings, murders, sociopathic characters (one hilariously portrayed by Topher Grace), fucked up family issues and outlandish plot turns that should keep even the most skeptical viewers enthralled.
“The Waterfront” is soapy and melodramatic in all of the best ways that make Williamson’s work so popular and enduring. The Buckleys are toxic and flawed, carrying deep-seated traumas that inform their interpersonal relationships and motivations. Because they are also so deeply fascinating to watch, audiences may find it difficult to stop themselves from binge-watching the season. The series twists and turns in such a way that even those who have been fans of over-the-top family dramas like “Revenge,” “Nashville” and “Brothers and Sisters” likely won’t be able to anticipate which direction the story will go.
Also, though many of the characters have insufferable traits, they are always a bit more layered than expected. At first, Bree appears fixated on enacting vengeance against Cane while refusing to confront her own flaws. Yet, as the story progresses, her backstory is fleshed out fully, revealing a woman still deeply tormented by a childhood incident. Most interesting is Cane’s prim and proper wife, Peyton (Danielle Campbell). Though she initially appears to be a typical Southern woman, by the time Season 1 comes to a close, it’s clear she has a lot more going on beyond the surface.
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Overall, “The Waterfront” is the Netflix equivalent of a beach read, but it’s highly entertaining. The series boasts all the good bone structure of a traditional family drama, with threads of criminality, infidelity, lies, drugs and everything in between woven throughout each episode. With episodes averaging around 40-50 minutes, the show is perfectly paced. Williamson never lets his viewers suffer through unnecessary and long-drawn-out scenes, even when the show’s rapid speed makes specific scenarios feel overly outlandish. McCallany and Bello stand as pillars in this story, anchoring it and allowing some truly colorful figures to emerge and recede from the narrative. What’s more, amid several loose ends that still need to be tied, “The Waterfront” has set itself up to be yet another one of the “Scream” franchise writer’s long-running fan-favorite shows.
“The Waterfront” is now streaming on Netflix.
From Variety US