Summary
The Accident is built on a faintly ridiculous premise and fails to explore it’s serious implications without succumbing to melodrama.
The Accident — the 2024 Netflix series, not the 2019 Jack Thorne limited series — is about a terrible tragic event that claims the lives of three children and leaves a fourth missing. Four interconnected families are torn apart, driven to extremes of guilt, greed, and sometimes violence. So, it brings me no pleasure to admit that I found the entire premise absolutely hilarious.
The show itself is not funny at all, don’t get me wrong. It’s very serious. The actors do a good job of communicating that seriousness in very intense performances. But I can’t imagine a world where an inflatable floating off into the sky will not be hysterical to me. It’s just a shame there were kids on it.
I should explain the premise, to be fair, so here it goes. At a children’s birthday party, kids from different families, all linked personally and/or professionally, are having the time of their lives on a big inflatable bouncy castle contraption. It’s a beautiful day and the nippers are loving it. Until they aren’t.
It’s obvious immediately that there’s a lot of money flowing around between these people. In the background of the party, Emiliano awaits a business call that might represent a substantial windfall. He’s distracted. He’s so distracted that he barely even notices the inflatable being swept up into the air by a sudden gust of wind, the kids still on it.
(We should note that while this is presented in the most ridiculous way possible, there have been many similar incidents in real life. The Accident isn’t based on a true story, but it’s more plausible than you’d think.)
Who’s responsible? Nobody can control the weather, of course, but the inflatable was supposed to be fastened down. Immediately, an innocent man is blamed for the negligence and strongarmed into accepting responsibility. The Accident is as much about power dynamics and classism as it is about the fallout of a tragedy.
With one of the kids apparently surviving but remaining missing, a manhunt interweaves with the complex and varied emotions of suddenly bereaved parents, who alternate between acting in their own self-interest and indulging fantasies of revenge and justice.
The Accident | Image via Netflix
The Accident feels like two different shows wedged together. The first is – if you put aside what I consider to be the hilarity of the accident itself – a pretty interesting exploration of grief in a complex web of different dynamics. The other is a silly, often very melodramatic thriller about immoral people acting like sociopaths. By the time the show switches gears again and becomes something akin to a legal drama, it is much beyond the point of having anything especially meaningful to say about the justice system.
It doesn’t help that it’s much too long. Ten episodes is on the shorter end for the telenovela-style soap that The Accident often threatens to become, but it’s egregious for a contemporary binge-watch crowd and does no favors to a story that already feels like it’s being pulled in too many different directions. Allowing space for every subplot the writer’s room could conceive only further detracts from the core and exacerbates that awkward chafing feeling of two different modes trying to operate in tandem.
I concede that most viewers won’t find the inciting incident as funny and ridiculous as I did. But I imagine many of them dropping off long before the end, bogged down in overly dramatic turns and an unavoidably saggy middle portion.
The complex ripple effects of an avoidable and deeply damaging tragedy remain fascinating fodder for a limited series, but there are more effectively dramatic – and less inherently comical – ways to explore the concept than this.
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