REVIEW: ‘The Survivors’ Tackles Crime Fiction With Empathy

The Survivors is an Australian drama miniseries created by Tony Ayres for Netflix. Based on Jane Harper’s 2020 novel, however, much of the series feels ripped from the headlines. This feeling comes in quickly in the first episode of The Survivors when the series opens, telling the audience that it will be telling an untold story. While melodrama weakens some of the series’ more interesting points, this is still one to stream.

In The Survivors, Kieran Elliott’s (Charlie Vickers) life changed forever when a severe storm ripped through his little town of Evelyn Bay, Tasmania, and his brother Finn Elliot (Remy Kidd) and their friend Toby Gilroy (Talon Hopper) drowned. Only those two were out on the water to save Kieran, the only survivor that night. But as the series’s opening begins, Gabby Birch (Eloise Rothfield) disappeared without a trace the same day, too, only she was forgotten. Like many noir dramas, Kieran returns after 15 years with his wife and young child.

What begins as Kieran showing his wife, Mia Chang (Yerin Ha), around his past quickly turns into a rising guilt. The young family is there to visit with Kieran’s parents, Verity (Robyn Malcolm) and Brian (Damien Garvey, and to meet their grandchild. But when the body of a young woman is found on the beach, the town is once again rocked by tragedy, and the investigation of her death threatens to reveal long-held secrets, the truth about the missing girl, and the fact that for 15 years, there has been a killer amongst them.

The Survivors opens the way most crime fiction stories do.

As much as the past coming to haunt your protagonist is expected in these kinds of stories, how the tight-knit community reacts to this new death makes The Survivors interesting. The community of Evelyn Bay is desperate for answers, which causes them to question everyone. A grieving mother struggles to have people listen to her, and Kieran’s father, who is suffering from dementia, winds up at the center of the town’s suspicions.

The Survivors is all about relationships when you peel back all of the intrigue. To start the limited series, Kieran doesn’t know how he will be welcomed after 15 years. To his surprise, Kieran is warmly greeted by his old friends Ash Carter (George Mason), Toby’s brother Sean (Thom Green), and his old flame Olivia (Jessica De Gouw), who is now dating Ash.

Meeting them is like meeting with the past, except he meets a woman named Bronte (Shannon Berry) too. While the town only ever talked about Finn and Toby, Bronte is more focused on Gabby; in fact, she is the one working on a documentary about Gabby Birch. But there is one person who isn’t happy to see Kieran, Liam (Julian Weeks), Toby’s son, who was a child when the accident happened.

As much as the warm welcome surprises Kieran, Liam’s response helps set the foundation for the limited series. Liam is angry and still grieving, and Kieran reminds him of all of that. The showrunners’ approach to pulling the loose threads of relationships only gets better throughout The Survivors.

This Netflix series focuses on relationships over spectacle in a small town in Tasmania.

However, suppose you don’t have a fond appreciation for the small nuances between people. In that case, many of these moments can feel too tacked on or melodramatic, at least concerning Kieran’s non-familiar relationships. This is largely due to many of the ensemble cast being relegated to the sidelines and not really being given a personality beyond their role toward Kieran.

That said, as The Survivors maps out unknown connections in the small town, like between Kieran’s mom and Liam or Mia and Gabby, the mess begins to pile up. It’s clear that everyone has secrets; only the audience and the town are mostly unsure of how it all pans out.

The Survivors is sometimes hard to watch, primarily around the allegations and fallout around Kieran’s father. As he deals with dementia, the audience and Kieran both have to navigate clouded memories and terrifying assumptions. As Kieran’s world falls around him for a second time, watching him navigate it can be cloudy at worst, but tense when it’s working.

As a whole, The Survivors is best entered without a lot of information. The story folds over itself multiple times, and not understanding which of the people in Kieran’s life knows the other or is invested in the other adds to the mystery. As a work of crime fiction, The Survivors is fantastic, but as a drama, it gets caught in its own web one too many times to be perfect. Still, this Australian Netflix series is one to add to your watchlist.

The Survivors is streaming exclusively on Netflix.