TV Pick of the Week: Untamed - review by Yvette Huddleston
Untamed Netflix, review by Yvette Huddleston
Eric Bana stars in this six-part crime thriller set against the stunning backdrop of Yosemite National Park in California. He plays taciturn detective Kyle Turner, a special agent in the National Park’s Investigative Services Branch. He is the lead officer on a mysterious case involving an unknown young woman who in a tense opening sequence falls from the summit of El Capitan and gets tangled in the ropes of two climbers making an ascent. The victim’s identity is unknown and it is unclear whether she jumped, fell after being chased by a wild animal or was pushed.
First on the scene are the park rangers including rookie Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) – a former LA cop recently moved out of the city to the wilderness with her young son – who have made preliminary enquiries. Then Turner arrives on horseback and takes charge. “Here comes Gary Cooper,” says a veteran ranger snidely under his breath. Turner is an outsider who is not interested in making friends, can be rude and uncompromising, has a bit of a drink problem and is still recovering from a family tragedy, but is very good at his job. Those are pretty standard, not to say cliched, characteristics for a male lead in the crime genre, but there is more than enough here in terms of layered, well-structure narrative and plot twists to keep the viewer intrigued and engaged.
Vasquez is assigned to assist Turner and as the pair investigate, they gradually reveal a dark back story as the young woman’s past comes to light and theories surface as to who she might be and what she was doing in the Park and why she was there. These include links to a hippy commune, possible criminal activity and the disappearance many years earlier of a child who was never found.
Alongside the central investigation, the script also explores aspects of the personal lives of both Turner and Vasquez. He is divorced and grieving the death of his young son, getting emotional support from his kind boss chief park ranger Paul Souter (Sam Neill) and still in touch with his ex-wife Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt) who he sometimes calls in the early hours of the morning. Meanwhile it transpires that Vasquez’s reasons for leaving LA are more complex than she has let on. There is a nice chalk-and-cheese chemistry between the two leads, great performances from the supporting cast and the photogenic landscape is very easy on the eye.