Based on the play “Elemeno Pea” by Molly Smith Metzler, Netflix’s “Sirens” feels like a story we’ve seen on television many times before. When her father receives a diagnosis of early-onset dementia, Devon (Meghann Fahy) desperately reaches out to her younger sister Simone (Milly Alcock), who, in turn, sends a fruit basket and leaves her texts ignored. After a stint in jail for reasons we find out later, Devon makes her way to the coastal island where Simone works as a live-in assistant to the charming and bewitching Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore).
Simone oversees preparations for Michaela’s annual summer gala to raise money for her bird sanctuary, seemingly addicted to this new and luxurious lifestyle. Dressed in bright pinks and blues hand-picked by Michaela, Simone’s white teeth gleam at each question her sister poses for her. Even though this is the only version of Simone we know at this point, it’s clear from Devon’s reaction that this is not the sister she grew up with. While Simone tries to save face, the idyllic life around her begins to crumble, forcing each of these three women to transform into an inauthentic version of themselves. By the time the weekend is over, each of them will be tested, with some coming out on top and others drowning under the surmounting lies they’ve told each other and themselves.
Although Devon believes her boss’s charm has somehow hypnotized Simone, she, too, falls for the seduction of Michaela’s lifestyle. We watch as Michaela plucks her chewing gum out of her mouth and places it onto Simone’s awaiting tongue, and commands the house staff like servants who delight at being at her beck and call. The life she’s cultivated for herself is one where she seemingly holds more power than her billionaire husband Peter (Kevin Bacon), all because of how she manipulates people and twists their motivations right in front of their eyes.
“Sirens” boasts an engaging ensemble cast, but it’s Moore who you won’t be able to take your eyes off of. As Michaela, she dons a plastic smile that slowly melts into a sneer or pout when she doesn’t get her way, before her face shuts down entirely in a robotic manner. Like her cult-like followers and friends, she appears trapped in a prison, emulating the women in “The Stepford Wives.” That is, until it becomes clear that under the stresses of being a trophy wife, Michaela may be the only character who is actually in complete control.
This control is at the heart of her relationship with Simone, whom Michaela shelters like a wounded bird. She wants to take care of Simone, clearly seeing a younger version of herself in her assistant, yet she is also desperate to mold the young woman into a clone. The relationship between the two is at times psychosexual, their gazes and touches elongated by the camera’s slow pans and a score that is backed by haunting gasps and breaths. Although she attempts to resist Michaela’s draw, Devon too becomes sucked into her world.
Modern television seems desperate to satirize the relationship between the working class and the rich, but “Sirens” offers us something more poignant. Although the series lacks a particular bite, it ultimately tries to examine how the lower class is sometimes forced to destroy who they truly are in an attempt to get ahead. One of the series’ most striking visuals is Michaela viewed through a telescope, staring into the lens covered in blood and clutching one of her precious dying birds. With this image, we’re forced to reckon with the figure of the trophy wife as a woman stuck in a perpetual limbo of suffering and grief.
If Moore haunts every frame like a ghost, Alcock whizzes through each scene like a fevered apparition. As Simone desperately tries to appease her boss, her secrets threaten to sabotage the life she’s built for herself in New York. In removing their matching sister tattoos and getting a nose job, Simone has become someone Devon scarcely recognizes. Yet as she and Michaela begin to war for the younger woman’s attention and support, it becomes clear that maybe Simone is the only one who truly knows who she is and what she desires.
The series is at its best when it offers viewers an engaging look at class and womanhood, abandoning the cheap thrills in which shows like “The White Lotus” revel. In its fourth and penultimate episode, the show becomes a full-on melodrama and hits a series high. With monologues shared between Alcock and Fahy and Bacon and Moore, this feels like one of the few series that understands how pulpy it is and is unwilling to sacrifice its true nature. While the fifth and final episode leans into this too much, the show never overstays its welcome. “Sirens” is a true limited series in an era where they’re pretty scarce, and although it lacks bite at times, in the end, it still manages to pack a thrilling punch.
All episodes were screened for review.
