Powerful acting keeps Netflix's Australian coastal crime drama from sinking
Created by prolific screenwriter/director/producer Tony Ayres, this crime drama is based on the novel of the same name by the equally prolific Jane Harper (The Dry).
The story takes place in – you won't believe it – a small town where everyone knows each other's business, and many members of the tight-knit community have long-held secrets. Unlike The Dry though, things are very wet in The Survivors; the setting is the fictional Evelyn Bay, a coastal town in Tasmania where everyone's lives revolve around the water – fishing, diving, tourist sightseeing boats.
Kieran Elliot (Charlie Vickers, last seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) is returning to Evelyn Bay for the first time 15 years, with his partner Mia (Bridgerton 's Yerin Ha), who also grew up there, and their newborn daughter. They've come to help out Kieran's parents, Brian (Damien Garvey) and Verity (the never less than astounding Robyn Malcolm), who are dealing with Brian's worsening dementia. Verity collects Kieran and Mia from the airport and is passive-aggressive to both of them from the outset.
The reason for her tepid welcome is soon revealed: 15 years earlier, Kieran's brother Finn (Remy Kidd) and his friend Toby (Talon Hopper) both drowned while trying to save Kieran who, despite his intimate knowledge of the landscape and the tides, found himself trapped in a local cave as it filled with water during a freak storm.
We're shown the incident in flashbacks, including the aftermath of Kieran in hospital as Verity blames him for his brother's death, while Brian tries to calm her down. Clearly that didn't work, as Kieran fled for the mainland as soon as he could.
But now he's back, and somewhat surprised that it's in time for the anniversary of the accident, which is to be commemorated with a special footy match. But his old mates Ash (George Mason) and Sean (Thom Green) welcome him back, even though Ash is now paired up with Kieran's ex, Liv (Jessica De Gouw), and others in town are less than thrilled.
There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but it's not as complicated as it might sound, I promise. Well, until a body washes up on the beach and the town is again rocked by tragedy. And paranoia. It's revealed the body is that of out-of-towner Bronte (Shannon Berry), who has been delving into the disappearance of Gabby (Eloise Rothfield), a young woman who also went missing during the storm 15 years earlier, but whose death has been overshadowed by those of the boys. Like Verity, Gabby's mother (Catherine McClements) is a broken woman.
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Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery
A brooding cop, troubled by his past. Stunning wilderness. Long-held secrets in a tight-knit community. A murder investigation. Eric Bana. Share these details with an Identikit artist, and you'll probably get something that looks like The Dry, or its sequel Force of Nature, the Australian feature films in which Bana starred as Jane Harper's detective Aaron Falk. But that, insists the 56-year-old whose star turn on the other side of the law as Chopper Read is now, remarkably, 25 years old, would be wide of the mark. 'I just love working outdoors. It's been a pretty consistent theme, that I'm always drawn to big outdoor shows,' he says. 'But I don't think they have too much in common after that.' In Netflix's six-part crime series Untamed, Bana plays Kyle Turner, a detective with the Investigative Services Branch. 'It's kind of like the FBI of the National Park Service,' he explains of the real-life ISB. 'There aren't that many of them [investigators], and they move around from park to park, depending on the workload.' Kyle is based in Yosemite, where he's lived for years. His ex-wife Jill lives nearby, and though she has repartnered, they are bound – not especially healthily – by trauma. Neither of them can, or will, move on. When a young woman drops to her death from a cliff (almost collecting a couple of climbers along the way, in one of the more spectacular opening sequences in recent memory), Kyle suspects foul play rather than an accident. Soon, he realises the dead woman is linked to a case he had investigated many years earlier, and that the sprawling wilderness he holds dear also hides a whole range of nefarious activities besides illegal campfires. The spark for the show was lit when screenwriter Mark L. Smith read an article about a real-life crime in a park, and the ISB investigation that followed. 'And it was just like, 'We haven't seen this on film before, a murder mystery thriller investigation in a national park',' Bana says. 'That's where the idea began, and then he just started fleshing it out. 'Well, who would this person be?' Loading 'He's not based on a real character,' he hastens to add of Kyle. 'It was just the germ of the idea.' Bana is a producer as well as star of the series, and as it was in development, a real-life story was unfolding in the Australian wilderness – the so-called High Country Murders of Russell Hill and Carol Clay, for which former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was ultimately convicted. For Bana, that duality of the remote wilderness was part of the appeal of the Untamed story. 'A lot of wacky stuff goes on, and that plays into the psyche,' he says. 'Even if you love the outdoors, there's the element that you always feel a little bit exposed.' There's the natural aspect – which, in Australia, often means the threat of bushfire or flooding or extreme heat or cold, or simply wandering off track and becoming hopelessly lost. 'But then there's also that thing of, well, what if there's someone else out here? What about the humans, you know? So on a subconscious level, I think everyone relates to that, and we definitely were trying to tap into that.' Bana read a script for the first episode in 2018, and was immediately onboard. But it took years to get it made. Why the delay? Loading 'COVID, strikes, trends, quality, making sure we had everything right. Just all the normal things – and the abnormal ones. I've lived with Kyle for a long, long time, probably one of the longest gestation periods I've had for a character.' ISB officers generally 'don't work as part of a massive team, and they are often highly skilled in their particular areas, used to working alone', Bana says. And Kyle has that lone-wolf vibe dialled up to 11. Basically, he just doesn't like people very much, himself included. Though the park is a major character too, the series was actually shot in Canada's Whistler, which Bana had previously visited on skiing holidays with his wife and kids a couple of times, but had never seen in the warmer months. 'In the middle of summer you can't get into Yosemite because of the tourists, and the restrictions,' he says. 'We just had more freedom of movement in British Columbia.' For Bana, much of that movement was done on the back of a horse. He first learnt to ride for Troy, more than 20 years ago. 'That was a pretty intensive training period because we were bareback, no stirrups for that film. So from there, everything's pretty easy afterwards.' Sometimes he'd get to set in the backwoods by car, sometimes by chairlift. And on one memorable day, he and co-star Sam Neill rode their horses to location. Loading 'They weren't in the scene, we were just using them as transpo,' he says of their trusty steeds. 'He's not even on camera today, my guy, but I'm using his saddlebag for packing some stuff. You'd just pinch yourself every day you were up on a horse on top of a mountain somewhere at the back of Whistler, and realise it was actually a job. It's just amazing.' Untamed marks Bana's second TV series out of the States, following Dirty John (based on the true-crime podcast) in 2018. Those with long memories will recall that he got his start as part of the cast of sketch-comedy show Full Frontal in the mid-1990s, had a brief eponymous solo show, Eric, from 1996, and played Joe Sabatini in the ABC's weeknight serial Something in the Air in the early 2000s. But post- Chopper, he has almost exclusively been a movie actor. Untamed doesn't represent a major shift, he insists. 'It doesn't feel that different. I mean, there are some days when you feel like, 'OK, we're really having to go quickly', but generally, there's not a huge difference between making a TV show and making a movie. ' On Dirty John, we had one director over the eight episodes, so that just felt like a big film. This, because I worked so closely with [creators] Mark and Elle, felt like a big film shoot, with three directors. It was amazing and incredible to work on and to put together an incredible cast for this.' That includes Rosemarie DeWitt (Mad Men, United States of Tara, The Boys) as Kyle's ex-wife, Jill, and Lily Santiago (La Brea) as Kyle's offsider Naya Vasquez. And, of course, it includes Sam Neill, aka The Prop (see the NZ actor and winemaker's prolific social media output for further detail). 'Sam Neill's a legend,' Bana proclaims happily. But, remarkably, this was the first time the pair had ever worked together. In fact, he adds, 'We'd never even met prior to this project, ever been in the same room. 'We have mutual friends, and the first day we met, we're both like, 'How is this possible?' 'He said, 'I feel like I've known you my whole life'. And I said, 'I feel the same'.' Of course, they got on like a house on fire. And, of course, Neill brought out a few bottles of his Two Paddocks pinot noir at the end of long shooting days. 'Absolutely, my word. He wasn't getting away from the job without some of that,' Bana says. But tell me, Eric – did he open the really good stuff, his top-of-the-line Fusilier, or First Paddock offerings? 'Oh,' Bana says with a laugh. 'I'm going to have to go through my picture library this afternoon and find out just how close a friend I am.'
The Age
6 days ago
- The Age
‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery
A brooding cop, troubled by his past. Stunning wilderness. Long-held secrets in a tight-knit community. A murder investigation. Eric Bana. Share these details with an Identikit artist, and you'll probably get something that looks like The Dry, or its sequel Force of Nature, the Australian feature films in which Bana starred as Jane Harper's detective Aaron Falk. But that, insists the 56-year-old whose star turn on the other side of the law as Chopper Read is now, remarkably, 25 years old, would be wide of the mark. 'I just love working outdoors. It's been a pretty consistent theme, that I'm always drawn to big outdoor shows,' he says. 'But I don't think they have too much in common after that.' In Netflix's six-part crime series Untamed, Bana plays Kyle Turner, a detective with the Investigative Services Branch. 'It's kind of like the FBI of the National Park Service,' he explains of the real-life ISB. 'There aren't that many of them [investigators], and they move around from park to park, depending on the workload.' Kyle is based in Yosemite, where he's lived for years. His ex-wife Jill lives nearby, and though she has repartnered, they are bound – not especially healthily – by trauma. Neither of them can, or will, move on. When a young woman drops to her death from a cliff (almost collecting a couple of climbers along the way, in one of the more spectacular opening sequences in recent memory), Kyle suspects foul play rather than an accident. Soon, he realises the dead woman is linked to a case he had investigated many years earlier, and that the sprawling wilderness he holds dear also hides a whole range of nefarious activities besides illegal campfires. The spark for the show was lit when screenwriter Mark L. Smith read an article about a real-life crime in a park, and the ISB investigation that followed. 'And it was just like, 'We haven't seen this on film before, a murder mystery thriller investigation in a national park',' Bana says. 'That's where the idea began, and then he just started fleshing it out. 'Well, who would this person be?' Loading 'He's not based on a real character,' he hastens to add of Kyle. 'It was just the germ of the idea.' Bana is a producer as well as star of the series, and as it was in development, a real-life story was unfolding in the Australian wilderness – the so-called High Country Murders of Russell Hill and Carol Clay, for which former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was ultimately convicted. For Bana, that duality of the remote wilderness was part of the appeal of the Untamed story. 'A lot of wacky stuff goes on, and that plays into the psyche,' he says. 'Even if you love the outdoors, there's the element that you always feel a little bit exposed.' There's the natural aspect – which, in Australia, often means the threat of bushfire or flooding or extreme heat or cold, or simply wandering off track and becoming hopelessly lost. 'But then there's also that thing of, well, what if there's someone else out here? What about the humans, you know? So on a subconscious level, I think everyone relates to that, and we definitely were trying to tap into that.' Bana read a script for the first episode in 2018, and was immediately onboard. But it took years to get it made. Why the delay? Loading 'COVID, strikes, trends, quality, making sure we had everything right. Just all the normal things – and the abnormal ones. I've lived with Kyle for a long, long time, probably one of the longest gestation periods I've had for a character.' ISB officers generally 'don't work as part of a massive team, and they are often highly skilled in their particular areas, used to working alone', Bana says. And Kyle has that lone-wolf vibe dialled up to 11. Basically, he just doesn't like people very much, himself included. Though the park is a major character too, the series was actually shot in Canada's Whistler, which Bana had previously visited on skiing holidays with his wife and kids a couple of times, but had never seen in the warmer months. 'In the middle of summer you can't get into Yosemite because of the tourists, and the restrictions,' he says. 'We just had more freedom of movement in British Columbia.' For Bana, much of that movement was done on the back of a horse. He first learnt to ride for Troy, more than 20 years ago. 'That was a pretty intensive training period because we were bareback, no stirrups for that film. So from there, everything's pretty easy afterwards.' Sometimes he'd get to set in the backwoods by car, sometimes by chairlift. And on one memorable day, he and co-star Sam Neill rode their horses to location. Loading 'They weren't in the scene, we were just using them as transpo,' he says of their trusty steeds. 'He's not even on camera today, my guy, but I'm using his saddlebag for packing some stuff. You'd just pinch yourself every day you were up on a horse on top of a mountain somewhere at the back of Whistler, and realise it was actually a job. It's just amazing.' Untamed marks Bana's second TV series out of the States, following Dirty John (based on the true-crime podcast) in 2018. Those with long memories will recall that he got his start as part of the cast of sketch-comedy show Full Frontal in the mid-1990s, had a brief eponymous solo show, Eric, from 1996, and played Joe Sabatini in the ABC's weeknight serial Something in the Air in the early 2000s. But post- Chopper, he has almost exclusively been a movie actor. Untamed doesn't represent a major shift, he insists. 'It doesn't feel that different. I mean, there are some days when you feel like, 'OK, we're really having to go quickly', but generally, there's not a huge difference between making a TV show and making a movie. ' On Dirty John, we had one director over the eight episodes, so that just felt like a big film. This, because I worked so closely with [creators] Mark and Elle, felt like a big film shoot, with three directors. It was amazing and incredible to work on and to put together an incredible cast for this.' That includes Rosemarie DeWitt (Mad Men, United States of Tara, The Boys) as Kyle's ex-wife, Jill, and Lily Santiago (La Brea) as Kyle's offsider Naya Vasquez. And, of course, it includes Sam Neill, aka The Prop (see the NZ actor and winemaker's prolific social media output for further detail). 'Sam Neill's a legend,' Bana proclaims happily. But, remarkably, this was the first time the pair had ever worked together. In fact, he adds, 'We'd never even met prior to this project, ever been in the same room. 'We have mutual friends, and the first day we met, we're both like, 'How is this possible?' 'He said, 'I feel like I've known you my whole life'. And I said, 'I feel the same'.' Of course, they got on like a house on fire. And, of course, Neill brought out a few bottles of his Two Paddocks pinot noir at the end of long shooting days. 'Absolutely, my word. He wasn't getting away from the job without some of that,' Bana says. But tell me, Eric – did he open the really good stuff, his top-of-the-line Fusilier, or First Paddock offerings? 'Oh,' Bana says with a laugh. 'I'm going to have to go through my picture library this afternoon and find out just how close a friend I am.'
Man of Many
18-07-2025
- Man of Many
'We Were All Pinching Ourselves': Eric Bana Talks Netflix's ‘Untamed'
By Dean Blake - News Published: 18 Jul 2025 Share Copy Link Readtime: 5 min Every product is carefully selected by our editors and experts. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more. For more information on how we test products, click here. Eric Bana has been a mainstay in the Australian creative industry for as long as we can remember, and for good reason. An incredibly talented actor, Bana's got the ability to play across multiple genres, from sketch comedy in his breakout role in Full Frontal, his work as Bruce Banner in 2003's Hulk, to his moodier, more dramatic offerings in The Dry. And now Bana is back, working with Netflix on the newly launched Untamed: a rather unique concept for a show, straddling the line between murder mystery, character-focused drama, and a beautiful invitation into the natural world. In Untamed, Bana plays Kyle Turner, a special agent for the National Parks Service who has been tasked with investigating a Jane Doe found in Yosemite National Park. Throughout the six-episode mini-series, Turner uncovers the seedy underbelly of the park, as well as Jane Doe's identity, and killer. It's a great watch if you haven't already dived in, and we were given the chance to chat with Bana ahead of the shows release, where we asked about the filming process, his time on set, and when we'll get some more Poida (don't hold your breath). Eric Bana in Netflix's Untamed | Image: Supplied First of all, congratulations on the show – it looks really great. Can you tell me a bit about the process of filming Untamed on-site? It's based in Yosemite National Park, but it was filmed in British Columbia in Canada, which is really dense woodland. How difficult was that? I guess once we got there it wasn't too bad, I think the most difficult part was searching for the locations and making sure they matched what was on the page and to try and get the epic scale of what we wanted—that was the huge selling point of the show, to have a murder mystery set in a national park. We wanted to deliver a transportive experience to the audience that would feel like they were somewhere else, that they could breathe in that air. It was tough on the crew in terms of moving the equipment around and the logistics of it, but once we were in those locations we were all pinching ourselves. You play Kyle Turner, a special agent of the National Parks Service. Can you tell me a bit about how you fleshed the character out over the course of filming, or how you found the character in something that is as character-driven as Untamed? There was so much on the page, and it was so beautifully written. When I first came across the material we only had the (script for) the first episode, but there was more than enough to tease and flesh out the potential—not only for my character, but the relationships he has with the other characters in the story. Mark Smith's writing is superb, so I was really confident that the journey we were about to go on would be a great one. It just kept revealing itself to me, every episode, it kept getting more intense, with more twists and turns. Eric Bana in Netflix's Untamed | Image: Supplied Is there any particular part of the filming process that sticks out to you as something that was really special, or memorable? I think every episode had a scene or a location where you'd stand there in the quiet moments and just really, really take it in. Particularly for Lily Santiago, who plays Naya (Vasquez), her and I were on our horses most days, traipsing around the mountains of British Columbia, and I'd always just say, 'we're getting paid for this, this is actually a job'. It was quite an amazing experience. Is there anything you're most proud of with the show? All of it, really. It is the show that we set out to make, it is the show that we had in our minds, and we were greatly supposed by Netflix to go out and make exactly what Mark had written. I think the scale of it is what really sets it apart—like I was saying, our hope was that when our audience click on to watch, they can feel like they've gone somewhere. There's a crime to solve, and there's a genre I'm familiar with, but this world feels very different. It's almost like a combination of a nature documentary with murder mystery. Sam Neill and Eric Bana in Netflix's Untamed | Image: Supplied You got to work with some pretty amazing actors in Untamed I wanted to ask about working with Sam Neill. It's always super exciting to see Aussies and Kiwis on the big screen, can you tell me about that experience? It was really special, we'd actually never worked together before. We have a lot of mutual friends and so I felt like I already knew him, and I got exactly what I was expecting and more from him. When we got together, I was like, 'we've actually never met. We've actually never been in the same room as each other,' which was so bizarre given all these years. And he plays such a pivotal character in the show, we were so lucky to get him onboard. Without giving too much away, his journey and our journey together through the course of the six episodes… I was really fortunate to have him as a scene partner. I think the whole cast was great. Just a really wonderful cast, greatly supported by some epic writing from one of the best writers around at the moment. When I told the rest of the Man of Many team, everyone had the same question: when are we getting more Full Frontal? (laughs) You must have an old team. How do you even find that stuff. Untamed is available exclusively on Netflix.
