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While we doubt this is true, we’ve been told that we’ve watched more TV in our lives than most. That’s a whole heck of a lot of TV, and in our memories, we’ve never seen a murder mystery thriller take place in a national park, with the murder being examined by the investigative arm of the National Parks Service. A new thriller on Netflix now checks off that box.
UNTAMED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Scenes of Yosemite National Park. We see two climbers on a cliff face; one is climbing, while the other is holding the safety line.
The Gist: Suddenly, a young woman’s dead body plummets from the cliff’s edge and ensnares the line, almost taking the two climbers with her.
We then see Special Agent Kyle Turner (Eric Bana) of the National Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch, look at evidence of bear hunters with his young son Caleb (Ezra Wilson). He gets a call about the body that was found, and rides over on his horse (yes, he rides a horse instead of driving a 4×4) to meet two rangers at the scene: Bruce Milch (William Smillie), who doesn’t trust Turner at all, and Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) a new recruit who used to be a cop in Los Angeles.
Even though the weather is threatening, Turner rappels down the cliff face to examine the woman’s body, which is still ensnared on the line. He tries to see her bracelet, but it falls off. She’s barefoot, and there are severe injuries to her legs, as if she got in a tussle with a coyote or a wild canine. The medical examiner confirms this to Turner and chief ranger Paul Souter (Sam Neill).
That night, Turner goes to the bottom of the cliff to retrieve the bracelet. He also sits on a small dock in a lake and drunkenly calls his ex-wife, Jill Bodwin (Rosemarie DeWitt) about the next night’s “celestial event,” a meteor shower. Never mind that it’s the middle of the night and she’s sleeping next to her current husband, Scott Bodwin (Josh Randall). Jill is so concerned, she actually goes to Turner’s messy cabin to see if he’s OK; she also calls Souter, who has been friends with both her and Turner for years.
Souter, perhaps via Milch, assigns Vasquez to trail Turner. He’s getting pressure from Lawrence Hamilton (Joe Holt), the park superintendent, to get the body identified and her death quickly solved. Vasquez tries to learn from Turner, including why he rides a horse everywhere: A horse can get to places a truck just can’t. They manage to find more evidence, including a bullet embedded in a tree; apparently the Jane Doe was shot in the leg, but the injury was hidden by the damage from the canine attack.
Photo: COURTESY OF NETFLIXWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Untamed, created by Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith, feels a lot like it could be titled True Detective: Yosemite.
Our Take: If it weren’t for the setting and the fact that the investigation is being conducted by the National Parks Service instead of, say, the FBI or local police, Untamed would be a bog-standard crime thriller. You have a mysterious death that takes up the entirety of the first season, investigated by a special agent with a troubled past and a drinking problem, assisted by a young and eager recruit who seems to be savvy but a bit out of place. Can’t get more bog-standard than that.
But the setting does matter, inasmuch as the idea that the parameters of a murder investigation are a little different when the crime scene could be one of the U.S.’s biggest national parks. As Turner tells Vasquez, Yosemite is as big as Rhode Island, so the tack she might have taken in the LAPD doesn’t exactly work. Turner is good at what he does, which is why Souter puts up with him being an a-hole to his rangers.
The fact that the NPS actually has an investigative arm was something that was new — or at least unfamiliar — to us, as well. Agents like Tucker don’t work in the same organization as the rangers, so Souter isn’t technically his boss, but he can give rangers marching orders. Yes, we could figure all of this out by looking at an org chart, but the politics of what goes on is something we haven’t been privy to on TV, at least not as far as we know.
The mystery of who this Jane Doe is and how she died is intriguing enough, but it does seem that the show is equally interested in Turner, who is literally haunted by a significant loss in his life, and that haunting long ago cost him his marriage and any sense of normalcy. Hopefully his story, and to a lesser extent, Vasquez’s city-cop-in-the-wilderness story will continue to be intriguing.
Photo: RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIXSex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Jay Stewart (Raoul Max Trujillo), a Native who used to be a ranger — he still wears his uniform when he goes fishing — tells Turner that the meteor shower tells him that “bodies will fall like stars,” as the Jane Doe’s body is slid into a morgue drawer.
Sleeper Star: Rosemarie DeWitt is her usual brand of tough but warm as Turner’s ex-wife Jill. Sam Neill is his usual gruff but semi-warm as Souter.
Most Pilot-y Line: Let’s just say that once you realize that Turner and Jill have been divorced for a long time, Caleb’s presence by Turner’s side isn’t hard to figure out. If that was supposed to be some sort of big twist, it didn’t work.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The setting and unique law enforcement politics, along with solid performances by Bana, Neill, DeWitt and Santiago, make Untamed the kind of show you might turn on as a distraction instead of a show that requires close watching. But it’s an entertaining distraction, with just enough story to keep things moving.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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