Top Tele // Sirens: The Binge Watch We All Needed

In the world of binge TV, is there anything more satisfying than watching rich people being horrible to each other?

If the current faves are anything to go by, it’s hard to deny how much we viewers get a kick out of it. The Perfect Couple, The White Lotus and Big Little Lies… they’ve all had us hooked. Watching privileged, entitled people tearing each other to shreds seems to be what gets us viewers going. Is it because these shows seems to prove the old adage that money doesn’t make you happy? That we can sit smugly on our sofas and say “See! I’m positively relieved I don’t have a second home on Nantucket!”

Possibly… but there’s also a healthy dose of escapism. The stunning beach backdrops, the steamy sex (usually extra-marital and always reckless), the elaborate costumes worn by rugged handsome men and achingly beautiful women. Bingeing these shows gives us a holiday from our normal lives, in a way that your average gritty, perhaps more plausible drama just doesn’t. It feels indulgent and somehow voyeuristic looking in from the outside…

My latest binge was the new Netflix smash hit, Sirens. And if you haven’t already seen it; run, don’t walk. But maybe read this article after you’ve watched it if you don’t want any spoilers.

A brief synopsis for those of you who’ve been under a rock for the past month or so. The show is centred around three women, all of whom you feel could carry their own spin-off show should there be further seasons.

Julianne Moore plays Michaela, the ethereal, ridiculously beautiful and powerful second wife of old-money business mogul Peter Kell. She reigns supreme over the sprawling New England estate they call home, universally feared by the myriad of staff.

Her assistant is the impossibly pretty doll-like Simone, who seems even more enthralled with Michaela than we are. It’s a strange cult-like place and theirs is a strange cult-like relationship.

The picture perfect pastel coloured scene is shattered when Simone’s sister Devon turns up in town, wreaking havoc with the facade of wealth and class Simone has worked so hard to create. But it’s Devon’s appearance which suddenly gives this sacharine sweet first episode it’s bite. We learn that the girls’ father is suffering with dementia and Devon is the one doing all the looking after him, we learn that Simone grew up in care due to the severe neglect she endured after her mothers death; and that ultimately it was Devon who dropped out of college, came back to Buffalo and raised her.

From the very beginning, the feel of the show is, well… off. It’s eerie and creepy and makes you feel uneasy in that way that great dramas do.

But there’s meat on the bones of this little gem of a show. It’s about so much more than just those aforementioned rich people being mean to each other.

Firstly, it’s about sisterhood. Possibly the most complex of bonds, riddled with jealousy, mixed with admiration and adoration. The betrayal of a sister can be more decimating than of any other relationship. The casting of Meghann Fahy and Millie Alcock is perfect. Both are utterly convincing in roles which are to be honest far too fantastical to be true. It made me really want a sister and simultaneously be very relieved I don’t have one. It was an on-steroids version of some of the fall-outs I’ve seen amongst my friends and their sisters over the years.

It’s not just about blood sisterhood either. The friendship (until the last episode - trying so hard for no spoilers) between Michaela and Simone is as intense as any sister bond could be. It’s almost reminiscent of a teenage friendship, where girls become inseperable and almost co-dependent. But as anyone who’s had an intense teen female friendship knows, that tie can be cut as fast as the wind changes, leaving the one left behind, reeling.

Sirens is uncomfortable on many levels but for me it was mostly uncomfortable because it asks the question, what are we capable of doing to our sisters or friends and what are our friends or sisters capable of doing to us?

Secondly, Sirens is about how our childhoods play out in our adulthood. How we can’t outrun trauma, no matter how hard we try to disguise it. The twist which comes in the final episode is shocking, but in the context of a child who was raised in care and has developed a survival instinct sharper than most, it makes absolute sense.

I’ve often looked at real-life siblings, including my own children, and thought “How have you lot grown up in the same house and turned out so staggeringly different?” and that’s something which is examined in the show. How the eldest, although undoubtedly a hot mess with a penchant for risky sex, seems to have a far more accurate moral compass than the younger sister she sacrificed so much for.

This show poses the question of how far a ‘good person’ might go for security, and for power. The answer is of course that nobody is all good, or all bad. We’re all just milling about in the grey area in between. How we justify our actions and who we’re answerable to depends largely on the strength of that survival instinct and the need for stability.

When, in the final episode Simone asks Devon with a disarming genuineness, “Am I not supposed to walk through a door that opens?” there will be few who agree she should’ve walked through that particular door, but still, we’ll understand why she did.

Sirens gives us an insight that with time, and with age, comes wisdom, acceptance and perhaps even more kindness. The true redemption of the character of Michaela is in her acceptance of her role in this particular story. The tale of a younger woman stepping into the shoes of her elder predecessor whilst the husband smiles smugly like the cat who got the cream; that’s a tale as old as time. And of course we all worked out by episode three that the villain of the piece wasn’t going to be Michaela, Simone or Devon. It was going to be misogyny, dressed up in the affable form of Kevin Bacon’s Peter Kell.

But we’re not worried, at least not for Michaela, are we? Something about her sitting on that boat as she sails off (into season two?) makes us feel she’s going to be absolutely fine. She’s a survivor too, you see.