Sirens explores a lot in just 5 episodes. It asks many questions without answering them. It’s based on the old story about sirens singing so seductively that sailors crashed their boats on the rocky cliffs of the island where the sirens were imprisoned. In this retelling of that old story, we see it from the sirens point of view as they deal with a whole lot of men who want to blame all their problems on women.
In Sirens, the women are beautiful and seductive. But they are still held prisoner by the men and the patriarchy in which they live. The sound track includes a beautifully hummed song to represent the sirens’ song, but is it a song for seduction or for freedom?
Devon (Meghann Fahy) lives in Buffalo, where she cares for her drunken and depressed father Bruce DeWitt (Bill Camp). She reaches out many times to her younger sister Simone (Milly Alcock) for help, but all she gets in response is an Edible Arrangement as big as a washing machine.
Devon hauls the fruit on a 17 hour trip to the island where Simone is working as an assistant to the rich Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore). Devon is shocked by the fact that Simone wants to stay where she is and has no intention of returning to her family.
Kiki, Devon, and Simone are the sirens in this story. Over the episodes we learn they all lost their mothers at an early age and Simone, in particular, was abused and neglected by her father. Simone is not missing the fam back home. She loves her new lifestyle among the rich.
Kiki’s wealth attracts all kinds of followers to her and her projects. The funniest are the three “fates” who follow her devotedly. It might seem Kiki is the ultimate seductress, the ultimate power, but there are always men around, aren’t there?
Kiki’s husband Peter (Kevin Bacon) actually owns the house and island where Kiki holds court. He seems like such an easy-going guy in his Crocs with his fat marijuana cigarettes and his kindhearted charm.
Simone has been sleeping with a rich guy from the island all summer named Ethan (Glenn Howerton). Devon tries to stay sober by substituting sex for booze. In this one weekend she found herself with a boat captain (Trevor Salter), a gardener, and her married boy toy from home Ray (Josh Segarra). She left Ray in charge of her dad at home and he shows up on the island with dad in tow. All these men have things to say about the behavior of the women and most of it isn’t favorable. The women get accused of being “monsters” again and again.
Much of this series is about wealth and privilege vs. the working class. Several times we see Simone running up a never ending staircase leading from the beach to the top of the cliff where the big house sits. A metaphor for social climbing, perhaps. The rich people all look alike (like Easter eggs, Devon says) and act alike. We get the below decks look at life with the help who have to carry out the whimsical orders of their rich masters.
Obviously, another thematic element of the story is women’s rights and place in a world where privilege, power, and fruitfulness can determine a person’s value in society.
The series took place in one weekend, but the key women characters in the story were all changed profoundly by the end of the series. There were some nice twists and surprises as the story perked along. The ending is ambiguous. Who were the monsters, after all?
I thought the series was different, a little zany, and great entertainment. All the directors were women: Nicole Kassell, Quyen Tran, and Lila Neugebauer. The series was created and written by Molly Smith Metzler.
Sirens is available in full now on Netflix.