Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Drowning’ On Sundance Now And Acorn TV, About A Mother Who Sees The Son She Thought Was Dead

When you write a show about a mother desperate to get back a child that she has lost, the toughest thing is to cast that mom. You want to make sure the acting job shows the pain and desperation the mother exhibits but also make the mother sympathetic and not a stalker. The Drowning benefits from a performance that tiptoes that line very well. Read on for more.

THE DROWNING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of a shimmering lake, a mom playing with her curly-haired son on the shore during a family picnic. The boy has a scar under his left eye. All of a sudden, the fun is shattered when the boy disappears.

The Gist: Nine years later, Jodie Walsh (Jill Halfpenny) is still rebuilding her life, but is about to pitch a big project for the landscaping firm she owns with her friend Yasmin (Jade Anouka). She’s on her way to make the pitch when she spots a curly-haired teenager (Cody Molko) walking to catch the bus to school. He’s carrying a guitar. It looks exactly like her son Tom, who supposedly drowned at that lake but whose body was never found.

Jodie decides to ditch her work pitch and follow the boy to his school. She even spies a scar under his left eye. She then follows the teen back to his sprawling house. When she goes to talk to her ex-husband, Ben Gilmore (Dara Devaney) about it — much to the annoyance of his current wife, Kate (Deirdre Mullins) — he just thinks she hasn’t put Tom’s death in the past yet.

Determined to get closer to the teen, Jodie applies for a music tutor job at his school; she’s told that she can’t start until she gets the proper paperwork, which she does (at least a faked version of it) with the help from Ade (Babs Olusanmokun), one of her employees. When she does get into class, he introduces herself to the boy, Daniel Tanner, and encourages him to get guitar lessons. When she sees his father Mark (Rupert Perry-Jones) at a “welcome back” event, she pushes the lessons, but Mark refuses.

At this point, she’s convinced that this teen is Tom, and that he was abducted from the lake. But also at this point, she’s the only one who thinks this. Tom’s death has definitely formed a rift in the Walsh family, with Jodie barely speaking to her brother Jason (Jonas Armstrong); at his encouragement, he attends the funeral of their father, who died suddenly. But when she sees her mother Lynn (Deborah Findlay) outside the church, she coldly tells her “sorry for your loss.” “He always blamed me [for Tom’s death]. So you know what? Fuck him,” she tells Jason.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Drowning has the same creepy, slow-burn noir-ish feel of a lot of shows that stream on both Acorn TV and Sundance Now (this show is streaming on both simultaneously). Recent examples are The Bad Seed and Bloodlands.

Our Take: Created by Francesca Brill and Luke Watson and directed with moody weirdness by Carolina Giammetta, The Drowning leaves you vaguely creeped out by the end of it’s first episode, which we get the feeling is just the way the creative team wanted it.

You don’t get a whole lot of time to scene set in the first episode. The show’s called The Drowning, after all, so you know what those first dreamy snippets at the lake are going to entail. No, what you get is a portrait of a hurt, determined woman who’s been struggling to put her life back together after such a momentous tragedy finding more than a ray of hope but knowing that everyone she tells is going to think she’s drowning in grief.

When you get a look at Daniel, there’s really no mystery that it’s Tom. The scar gives it away. So the gambit in this show is how will Jodie pursue this without being looked at as a nutcase creeper? She’s already bordering on that in the first hour, ditching her responsibilities to her business partner Yasmin, getting faked documents in order to be near Daniel, and then paying special attention to him when she’s in the school. It feels like everyone in this school is clueless about what she’s doing?

Then again, maybe not; the school’s assistant headmaster, Miss Towne (Roisin O’Neill), seems to be keeping her eye on Jodie, so maybe something will come of that. But what we do worry about is that, once Jodie does figure out that this really is Tom and that he was abducted nine years ago, this will settle more into a standard drama where she tries to make everyone — including Daniel/Tom — see what she does, and how much risk she’s willing to take to do that.

How Halfpenny plays Jodie is intriguing; she’s determined and a little bit obsessed, but she also knows how right she is. Just by her manner of dress — she wears a leather jacket to her dad’s funeral — you can tell that she’s a bit of an against-the-gran person, so it’s going to be interesting how Halfpenny balances that aspect of Jodie’s personality while tiptoeing right on the line of criminally obsessed/creepy.

Sex and Skin: None so far.

Parting Shot: Jodie goes to the Tanner home unannounced, and when Mark lets her in, she looks to her left and sees Daniel standing there.

Sleeper Star: There is a family subplot revolving around what happened the day Tom disappeared, which will likely factor into how Jodie battles to get Tom back in her life. So Jonas Armstrong and Deborah Findlay will be two people to watch in this series.

Most Pilot-y Line: Jodie walks into the music room while Daniel is playing his guitar and softly calls “Tom” to him, as if he might recognize it. When he turns around and says his name is Daniel, he seems completely non-plussed that this new teacher just called him by a different name.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Drowning has some aspects that are a little on the unbelievable side, but for the most part it’s a well-written, well-acted psychological mystery.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Drowning On Sundance Now

Stream The Drowning On Acorn TV