eric bana untamed
Image: Netflix

THERE’S A GENRE OF CULTURE – your English professor might have called it “the pastoral” – but I’m going to use the term “sad-dude-in-the-woods” – that could inspire even the homiest of bodies to up sticks and make a life among the . . . sticks. You know, instinctively, what I am talking about: wild west drama Yellowstone, of course, but also Henry Thoreau’s Walden or Taylor Swift’s folksy pandemic album Folklore. It’s a plaid shirt and unbrushed hair; it’s howling at the moon about unhealed heartbreak; it’s irresistible. The only way to improve on such woodsy adventure? A murder mystery, of course.

Enter Untamed, which is set in what might just be world’s most famous woods: California’s Yosemite National Park. (Maybe Winnie the Pooh will have differing opinions.) We open, mountainside, as a woman falls from a cliff edge and is entangled in the ropes of some mountaineers. Was she high? Was she suicidal? Or was she, you know, a victim of some forest-related drama? For the sake of a good murder mystery, I’m pleased to say it’s the latter. And thankfully, Netflix has assembled a telegenic cast for this jaunt to the woods.

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Eric Bana plays special agent Kyle Turner (of course, he’s called Kyle turner), a gruff and aloof member of an investigative team at the National Parks. The Australian actor stomps around in his bootcut jeans grimacing at his surroundings and colleagues. “You’ve got this way about you,” Sam Neill’s park ranger tells Kyle about his way with people, “it’s like the rest of them are trying to steal your oxygen.”

What do I need to tell you about Kyle? Would it surprise you to discover that he has a drinking problem? How about his insomnia? Or that he is estranged from his family? Or that he’s really brilliant at his job? Off he trots on his horse to collect clues and follow his instincts, along with the park’s new ranger, Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), who becomes Turner’s trusted and snappy side kick.

Okay, sure, this six-part series is predictable, but it sure looks nice. Deer jaunt, streams trickle, paths lead to nowhere. There are mountains. Like a lot of prestige-adjacent, expensive-looking television, it is a nice place to spend a few hours. Other good things: there are, in Mark L Smith and Elle Smith’s script, snappy retorts and decent jokes. Director Thomas Bezucha lands some nice visual gags, too. And elsewhere in the show, genuine scares. In the first episode, “A Celestial Being”, an animal made me jump so much that I made the decision not to watch a horror film or visit a zoo for the foreseeable.

Smart to set things up so expertly – if anything, it feels a little too professional – in the first couple of episodes. Because the show finds the tension it so desperately needs is when it begins to peel back the woodsy appeal. The displaced communities; the lost children (metaphorically); the bloody violence just off the well-beaten tourist trail. That’s where there’s some intrigue, and the show would do well to lean into that subversive appeal in the future. As Kyle tells his protégée early on, “You’re wasting time until you realise you’re not.”

He’s talking about the daily life of being a detective, though you could say exactly the same about this show. For long, not-unpleasant stretches, you are simply staring at the scenery, bobbing along with this bunch of randos, and then suddenly there is a twist in the path, a conspiratorial flourish, that keeps you going. Better dust off your plaid shirt.

All episodes of ‘Untamed’ are available to watch on Netflix from today.

This story originally appeared on Esquire UK.

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