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Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- 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
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- 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.'
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Untamed' Review: Netflix's Best New Show Is A Murder Mystery With A Killer Setting
Untamed Two mountain climbers scale the sheer cliffside of Yosemite National Park's El Capitan in the opening moments of Netflix's new murder mystery miniseries, Untamed. This alone is enough to make me squeamish. I don't like heights. I've never understood the appeal of repelling up a mountain, only a dizzying drop to certain death below. Of course, this is no ordinary ascent. As they grapple their way up, a young woman topples down. She's caught in the rope, almost bringing the two climbers down with her. It's a harrowing moment. Light spoilers follow. What looks like a possible suicide is quickly revealed to be something far more sinister, and an investigation kicks off led by taciturn Investigative Services Branch (ISB) agent Kyle Turner (Eric Bana). Turner is a man of few words, the sort of grizzled, stoic mountain man that prefers a horse to a truck, and animals to people. He's also very good at his job, just as comfortable interrogating suspects as he is navigating perilous wilderness terrain. He's joined in his investigation by rookie National Park Service ranger Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) who left her police job in Los Angeles – and a bad relationship – behind to start a new life with her young son. Vasquez is as green as they come, but she's a quick learner. Turner doesn't really like working with people, but he's given no choice. Chief Park Ranger Paul Souter (Sam Neill) makes sure of that. From here, the investigation leads our heroes down an increasingly dark path, first to identify the young woman and then to find out if foul play was involved. Of course, peeling back the truth of the woman's death leads to many other unpleasant revelations. These involve illicit activity in the park as well as Turner's tragic backstory involving his now ex-wife Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt) and their son, who died several years earlier. Untamed The series reminds me a lot of other shows like The Killing, though it's able to fit the entire story into an economical six episodes instead of the 26 that make up that show's first case. In this sense, there's little new or innovative about Untamed. In fact, if The Killing and Taylor Sheridan's (excellent) movie Wind River had a baby, Untamed would be it. Much of the appeal here is in its two main leads: Eric Bana and Yosemite itself. Perhaps the series should have taken a page from Sheridan's biggest hit, Yellowstone, and used Yosemite for the title. It's mostly filmed in British Columbia, but it's gorgeous to look at regardless. The rich forest terrain, the stunning mountains, all that wilderness hiding so much of humanity's darkest secrets. Bana, meanwhile, really channels Pedro Pascal, or at least Pascal's performance in The Last Of Us. Like Joel, this is a man who lost a part of himself when he lost his child. He's turned to booze and solitude and his work to distract himself from the pain and grief of that loss. I kept imagining Pascal in the role, though I'm glad we got Bana instead. Both are fine actors, but Pascal is simply in too many things these days, and Bana is terrific here, tapping into that rugged mountain man exterior while at the same time revealing a much more emotionally charged interior world. Untamed also made me wish that we'd get another season of True Detective from its original creator, Nic Pizzolatto, set in this kind of rugged wilderness. All three seasons of Pizzolatto's True Detective did such a great job of creating a sense of place (whether or not Season 2 worked all that well, the southern California it gave us was remarkably bleak in a way I've never really seen before or since). Seasons 1 and 2 captured the deep south and the Ozarks in grim splendor, making the places come alive in a way that few other shows have ever been able to achieve. Untamed never quite makes Yosemite feel like a real place, no matter how gorgeous the scenery. What it does do is give us a compelling, if not particularly original, mystery in a tight six-episode run, filled with good characters that are easy to root for (or against) and some nice twists and turns to keep us on our toes. This isn't an action-packed series. It's much more about following the clues down whatever mineshaft they lead. There are some moments of tension and even a couple good gunfights, but this is more detective work than shoot-em-up, which I appreciate. Is it groundbreaking? Not at all. Is it a bit too predictable? Absolutely. Is it still a fun watch with some good detective work and emotional beats that keep you invested in the main characters. I certainly thought so. No, this is not on the same level as True Detective, Mare Of Easttown or Happy Valley, but it's a solid watch that doesn't outwear its welcome. Give it a shot. P.S. It's kind of funny that Turner is an ISB agent, because when I think of ISB agents I think of these fine Imperial Security Bureau employees, just doing their best to maintain order in the galaxy: ISB
Time Magazine
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Breaking Down the Twists and Reveals in the Ending of Netflix's 'Untamed'
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Untamed. The temptation is strong to classify Untamed, the new series from screenwriter Mark L. Smith and his daughter Elle Smith, as Netflix's answer to Paramount's Yellowstone. In fact, it's not wrong to at least assume as much; when one studio makes a cool $2 billion from their neo-Western surprise smash, a non-zero number of competing studios will inevitably scramble to fund their own. But if Untamed is a product of the ongoing content arms race between cable networks and streaming services, it is nonetheless a better genetic match to Top of the Lake, Jane Campion's 2013 New Zealand mystery drama, whose skeletal structure reads like the unintended template for television's modern crop of regional detective dramas. Untamed, like Yellowstone, concerns itself with one of America's best ideas: its national parks. But it's also a trim limited series rooted in the stuff of parenthood, like Top of the Lake—the sins of the father (and the mother, for good measure), self-doubt, overwhelming powerlessness, and lots of grief. No conflict is had between the old ways and the new, so to speak, not even in context with white settlers' theft of Indigenous land. Instead, the show excavates the souls of its co-leads, Kyle Turner (Eric Bana), an Investigative Services Branch (ISB) agent for the National Park Service in Yosemite; and Naya Vasque (Lily Santiago), an L.A. transplant and NPS newbie, assigned to assist Turner in following the threads of a potential murder case in the park. What they unravel from that skein cuts not only to their cores as parents, but the story's supporting characters' cores, too, from Paul Souter (Sam Neill), Turner's friend, mentor, father figure, and boss as Yosemite's chief ranger, to Jill (Rosemary DeWitt), Turner's ex-wife, who can't resist the gravitational pull of his PTSD. She has her own emotional and moral baggage, too, some that's conventional, and some that's harder to spot, like sunlight glinting off a hunting rifle's scope. Jill takes the hit… Likewise, the reveal of one Sean Sanderson's fate lands one episode too late in Untamed to make an impression on the narrative; it's a missed opportunity by the Smiths to lend Jill necessary character depth. Sanderson (Mark Rankin in a walk-on role) went missing in Yosemite about five years ago in the show's timeline, but his name is brought up frequently in its present. His family is filing a wrongful death suit against the park, and their lawyer, Esther Avalos (Nicola Correia-Damude), visits Turner and Jill alike, sniffing around for information about his disappearance. DeWitt is one of our most casually gifted actors, in that whatever role she plays in whichever medium she chooses, she constitutionally reads as at-ease in her characters; they're lived-in and breathe life through the screen. Jill is no exception. But the guarantee of a good DeWitt performance can't offset Jill's meager profile on the page. She is, like Turner, figuratively haunted by the death of their young son, Caleb (Ezra Wilson), revealed in the series opener, 'A Celestial Event,' to have tragically died prior to Untamed's events–about five years, in fact. Turner is literally haunted, per his recurring conversations with Caleb; it isn't made explicit whether he's an apparition or just a hallucination, but there is nonetheless a ghostly quality to their dialogue together. In keeping with popular male balms for spiritual suffering, Turner turns to alcohol and functions as a mollusk, socially and professionally; his stoicism is an act, one his peers pick up on, and which some openly deride. 'Christ, here comes Gary Cooper,' grouses Milch (William Smillie) when Turner strides on horseback into the scene of the crime that spurs Untamed's A-plot: the murder of Lucy Cook (Ezra Franky), met in 'A Celestial Event' when she leaps off of El Capitan and into the ropes of two climbers ascending the granite monolith—a plunge she doesn't survive. The no-nonsense lawman routine is tired, within the text as well as without—if Milch and the rest of the park staff are done with Turner's schtick, then maybe television writ large should be, too—but at least it's normal. Jill, by contrast, responds to Caleb's death another way altogether. It turns out that Sanderson—he of the missing persons case—is Caleb's killer, whose crime was caught after the fact on motion cameras set up by Shane Maguire (Wilson Bethel), Yosemite's Wildlife Management Officer and staff reprobate. Shane intended those cameras to document animal migration patterns; instead, they reflect Milch's words to Vasquez in the second episode, 'Jane Doe,' that when people trek into the wild, they assume no one's around to watch them, 'so they do whatever bad sh-t pops in their head.' Shane brings this information to Turner and Jill, and offers them revenge in the form of taking out Sanderson. Turner refuses; but Jill accepts. We spend most of the show assuming Turner's change in temperament, following Caleb's death, is the catalyst for his and Jill's divorce. It's a welcome change to the formula that Jill's decision to engage Shane's services is in fact what broke their marriage. If only the Smiths worked that twist into Untamed before the finale. Dropping that grenade on the audience with so little time left to feel the impact does Jill little justice, but DeWitt does, in fairness, invest great pathos in her. As much as it comes as a shock that someone so mild-mannered would turn that dark, the matter-of-factness in DeWitt's delivery reads as confrontational: given the opportunity, would you, fellow parents, make the same choice as her? …but Souter takes a fall There is, of course, another twist to accompany Jill's disclosure to her second husband, Scott (Josh Randall), as we are still awaiting resolution in the matter of Lucy Cook's death. After Turner cleverly unlocks Lucy's iPhone by applying formaldehyde to her corpse's cheeks to dupe its facial recognition biometrics, he discovers that Lucy's heretofore anonymous lover, Terces—'secret' spelled backwards—is actually Shane, and based on videos showcasing him abusing her, not to mention his pro-murder worldview, he looks like the culprit responsible for her ultimate plunge off of El Capitan. But looks are deceiving. Sure, they're not deceiving enough that we feel any kind of pity for Shane when Vasquez gets the drop on him and guns him down, saving Turner's life; unsurprisingly, Turner figures out Shane's involvement in a drug trafficking scheme in Yosemite, moving product in and out of the park through bygone mining tunnels; Shane takes the discovery badly, and nearly kills Turner in a drawn-out hunt over hill and dale. But if Shane is a monster who is guilty in the matter of how Lucy lived, as both her abusive partner and a participant in the drug ring, he is nonetheless innocent in the matter of her death. The real guilty party here is Paul Souter, who also happens to be her biological father, a truth only he and Lucy are privy to. In an abstract perspective, this makes thematic sense. Untamed is about parenthood on a molecular level: the lengths we'll go to protect our children, and the depths we plumb if we're so unfortunate as to mourn them. Vasquez' character arc involves Michael (JD Pardo), her ex-partner on the force and in life, and their son, Gael (Omi Fitzpatrick-Gonzales), whom she took with her to Yosemite for his safety; in flashbacks, we see Lucy with her mother, Maggie (Sarah Dawn Pledge), in happier times, learning about her Miwok ancestry; Paul looks after his granddaughter, Sadie (Julianna Alarcon), while his other, acknowledged daughter, who isn't seen in the show, struggles with personal demons of her own. None of this makes the screenwriting decision to put the burden of Lucy's death on Paul any more welcome or tasteful, though. It's another knife in Turner's back when he's just gotten off of bedrest, post-recovery after his grueling fight with Shane; when he connects a few stray dots that lead him to Nevada, where he meets Faith Gibbs (Hilary Jardine), whose parents fostered a slew of kids, including Lucy. Faith recalls Lucy talking about how her father, a policeman, would come for her one day, and arrest the Gibbs, who severely mistreated their various wards. The gears in Turner's head grind along as she dredges up this memory, and he confronts Paul first thing upon returning to Yosemite. All Paul can do is argue that he only meant the best by whisking her away to the Gibbses, far from her violent stepfather. It's a weak case for the character to make, given the abuse the Gibbses subjected Lucy to, and that when she comes back to the park as an adult to extort Paul, he reacts by accidentally chasing her to her death off of El Capitan–a revelation that feels quite like letting all the air out of a balloon. …and Turner moves on. Consequently, that makes a weaker conclusion for the narrative, one the series can only wrap up by having Paul use his pistol on himself and take a tumble into rushing river waters. Worse, that unceremonious and unearned end robs oxygen from Turner's own catharsis, a black flag at Untamed's last lap. Turner is the lead. His growth as a human being is what we're here for. Paul's increasingly bad decisions throw up a smoke screen around that growth, minutes before the story closes the arc of Turner's self-destructive bereavement. The pivot to Paul's complicity is especially frustrating given the wonderful foundation for Turner's ultimate closure laid out by his friend, former colleague, and Miwok community leader, Jay (Raoul Max Trujillo), in a monologue in the fifth episode, 'Terces,' about the connection he feels to his forebears through his connection to Yosemite's land. 'When it's my time to die, I will die here,' Jay says. 'But if I chose to die somewhere else, I would still have my ancestors with me, because the spirits in this valley are within each one of us.' Turner tearfully echoes the sentiment in 'All Trails Lead Here,' during a final farewell with Caleb's visage. 'No matter where I am, or where I go, you'll always be with me,' Turner chokes. When the credits roll, he's on his way out of Yosemite, the site of his anguish, for good, newly at peace and secure with the memories he has of his beloved son. Untamed incidentally reminds viewers just how vast our country is, at a moment when the world feels smaller than ever–an illusion we perform on ourselves with slavish devotion to our personal devices and social media. Paul's confession and suicide therefore strikes a sour chord on the series' driving motif. Emphasizing the bonds we hold with our loved ones, whether they're with us or not, makes a more fitting ending, for Jill, for Vasquez, and especially for Turner.
Daily Mirror
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Untamed viewers all say the same thing about Netflix crime series in first few seconds
Netflix's mystery thriller Untamed may have just only dropped onto the streaming service but eager fans have already binged the whole lot - as they make the same comment Netflix fans are all settling down to watch new crime series Untamed tonight - and they're all saying the same thing just a few seconds into watching. All six episodes in the series dropped today (July 17) and many Netflix fans have already binged the whole lot. The limited series, stars Eric Bana as Kyle Turner, an Investigative Services Branch agent of the National Parks Service. He's on the hunt for a killer who knows Yosemite National Park as well as he does. However, with a number of twists and turns, dark secrets in the park's past may prove just as dangerous as the murderer... The series wastes no time getting straight into the action, as during the first episode of the series, Kyle doubts a woman's fatal fall from El Captain was an accident - as he believes the truth lies deeper within Yosemite. While we won't give anything away just yet, fans are all rushing to X, formerly known as Twitter to praise the series, with many saying they're already "hooked" within the first few moments. "I'm already hooked on #Untamed," said one, while another said: "3 minutes of the #Untamed series & I'm already hooked." A third penned: "Just got to the end of episode 3. What a show, so far," as a fourth agreed: " #UntamedNetflix is such a great series." Joining Bana in the star studded cast is Jurassic Park star Sam Neil as Paul Souter. Souter has been the chief park ranger in Yosemite half his life and is a close friend to Turner. Also starring in the cast is Lily Santiago as young police officer Naya Vasquez and Daredevil star Wilson Bethel as Shane Maguire. Earlier in the year, fans were treated to a nail-biting trailer, which heard Bana commentate: "People come here to explore, see maybe 10% of the park," later adding: "Things happen different out here." The series is said to be perfect for those who were gripped by Yellowstone and American Primeval - with fans sure to be hooked in within seconds. Fans have been waiting at the edge of their sofas ever since the trailer dropped earlier this month, with Eric Bana fans rushing to the comments to express their excitement.
