Sirens review – Julianne Moore’s utterly addictive cult drama is preposterously fun | Television & radio

Are you prepared for some enjoyable? Don’t you deserve it? I believe all of us do – life’s terrible – so I gladly current to you Sirens, which is The White Lotus meets all the nice collection that Nicole Kidman has been in, with only a sprint of Ryan Murphy-esque camp to make all of it go along with an particularly zingy swing! Welcome!

It’s a story of two sisters and a superrich villain whose cult-like way of life threatens to come back between them. Older sister Devon (Meghann Fahy – sure, of White Lotus fame, taking a a lot meatier half this time and working with it) is a semi-functioning alcoholic who’s caring for his or her more and more troublesome father whereas working a minimal wage job on the native falafel joint and banging her married boss on the aspect. When she sends little sister Simone (Home of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock and astonishing youngster actor in Tim Minchin’s heartbreaking comedy Upright) a plea for assist when their father is identified with dementia, Simone responds by sending an edible association (or fancy fruit basket, if you happen to’re British). Devon duly units off on the lengthy journey to her sister’s new place of make use of with the clear intention of ramming stated fruit association up her arse and asking questions later.

What she finds when she will get there, nonetheless, requires all fruit/arse-ramming plans to be placed on maintain and older-sister instincts to take over. Simone is the live-in PA to socialite and raptor conservationist Michaela Kell, performed by Julianne Moore at her greatest and most unsettling. Michaela – or Kiki, as Simone is delighted to be allowed to name her – is married to hedge fund billionaire Peter (Kevin Bacon) and has a tribe of acolytes; Devon instantly pegs her as a cult chief who has Simone in thrall. She begins a marketing campaign to avoid wasting her sister from Michaela, from her boyfriend (Peter’s flaky greatest buddy Ethan, performed by Glenn Howerton), from the lure of the life-style she is having fun with, and the much more gilded one she serves, and from forgetting who she is and the place she got here from.

All this whereas Devon should additionally cope with undesirable visits from her boss and pop, the employees that hate Simone for her high-handed methods, an area police pressure that’s in Michaela’s pocket (which permits for a sterling repeated comedian flip from Solely Murders within the Constructing’s Catherine Cohen as Devon’s companion within the drunk tank), and preserve a brand new, fragile sobriety.

A plot unfurls that’s wholly addictive, endlessly entertaining and completely preposterous. However it’s stored from spinning uncontrolled (and from changing into senseless froth) by the sisters’ step by step revealed historical past and the deepening dynamics of their relationship, and their relationships with different characters, together with Michaela and Peter. Till by about halfway, you realise you’ll have been wrongfooted all alongside.

With out ever shedding its wit or bounce, Sirens turns into a research in household, class and all kinds of different energy struggles, the countless prospects for good and sick that wealth brings, and the legacies of childhood trauma. It’s additionally fairly good on the worth of sacrifice and the way shut you need to stand to giant home windows when there are just lately launched falcons flying about, and to cliff edges when you’re a male character in a miniseries named after a bunch of mythological girls stated to lure sailors to their doom. Although the identify, too, is a minimum of partly a misdirection.

By the top of its narratively and emotionally tight-packed 5 episodes – no streamer’s bloat right here – Sirens has gained undoubted heft. You’ll be able to see how and why it attracted actors of such excessive calibre. Tailored for the display by Molly Smith Metzler from her personal play Elemeno Pea, with Colin McKenna and Bekah Brunstetter, it suits the brand new kind completely, however nonetheless has sufficient theatricality to permit many of the leads a minimum of a minor monologue by which to flex their muscle tissue and fly.

It’s a uncommon fowl in another approach, too. Its finale manages to fulfill what I believe will quickly develop into a really loyal viewers, whereas leaving open the opportunity of a second collection – which, for the primary time in a very long time, I discover myself hoping will likely be forthcoming. Let the nice instances roll.