Summary
Sirens uses the gloss and familiar premise of a cliched streaming hit to covertly sneak in a genuinely affecting family drama.
In Greek mythology, sirens were creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with beautiful singing and a fetching feminine top half, hiding some sort of hideous bird body and their murderous intentions underneath. This same-named Netflix series is a bit like that, but instead of a lovely song, it entices with a crackling social satire in the vein of The White Lotus, before revealing not a monstrous underside but a surprisingly tender one. It’s a family drama hidden in a camp cult parody. And it’s really rather good.
Initially, the story is about sisters and surrogate mothers and unhealthy dependent relationships, but then it’s sneakily about fathers and daughters and surprisingly vivid trauma of a deeply human variety. You could never predict what the show will ultimately become, not because it takes wild and exaggerated swerves, but because it’s hiding so much authenticity beneath such a coiffed pile of upstairs/downstairs cliches.
Our point-of-view character for much of the tightly-paced five episodes is Devon (Meghann Fahy, in another nod to The White Lotus and also stars in The Perfect Couple), the hot mess trope blown out to exaggerated proportions. She’s working a minimum-wage job at a falafel joint to support her ailing father, keeping going with a heady cocktail of alcohol and casual sex. Things are strained between the two – Bill Camp brilliantly plays the dad, Bruce – and Devon has no support, least of all from her little sister Simone (Milly Alcock, House of the Dragon), who has taken up residence in the extravagant cliffside home of her new boss, Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore, Sharper; May December; Kingsman: The Golden Circle), a socialite who is spending her hedge fund billionaire husband’s money on a raptor conservation program and, possibly, a cult.
It’s primarily Devon who’s pushing the cult angle, though granted, not without cause. When she visits to return the placatory edible arrangement that Simone sent in response to Bruce’s dementia diagnosis, Devon convinces herself that Simone is in the thrall of a woman whose influence is deeply sinister. And she’s right in a way. Michaela calls herself “Kiki”, which is weird in itself, has a mantra-like conversational calling card – “Hey hey,” which Simone chirpily recites back to her – and has the local police in her pocket. Staff are rigorously controlled, and something seems to be amiss. But Simone seems to love her job, or at least the lifestyle it affords her, and mostly just wants Devon and her messy problems to go away.
(L to R) Meghann Fahy as Devon, Kevin Bacon as Peter Kell in episode 102 of Sirens. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
These two twin prongs – Devon coming to realize that perhaps Michaela is mostly just spending her husband Peter’s (Kevin Bacon, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Leave the World Behind, They/Them) money because she has nothing better to do, and that Simone is an independent adult with her own hang-ups and ambitions who can make her own decisions – form the endlessly surprising arc of Sirens, which steadily morphs from a very funny class comedy into a much more meaningful drama that uses the lenses of money and power to explore the fabric of family, relationships, and childhood trauma.
The deepening relationship between Devon and Simone is, of course, central to this, and the precise nature of their circumstances and their respective relationships with their father is integral but better left unspoiled. Needless to say, there’s a lot more seriousness underpinning the sisterly bond than it first seems, and the dynamics are complicated by the inclusion of other characters like Michaela and Peter, Simone’s boyfriend Ethan (Glenn Howerton, Velma) – who happens to be Peter’s flighty friend – and Bruce himself.
The misdirection is expertly handled, and one assumes the late revelations of the script – adapted for the screen by Molly Smith Metzler from her own play, Elemeno Pea – and the unexpected emotional weight it carries is the primary reason it attracted this great cast. And it’s just as well since you need real actors to play this; the glossy packaging and campy sensibilities of a streaming hit hide a proper TV show with serious thematic and dramatic depth. It’s a Trojan horse, an anti-Netflix original that happens to be streaming on Netflix. Even the obligatorily open-ended finale feels less like a threat and more like a tantalizing promise. And it only needed five episodes to do it! So many lessons could be learned from Sirens, and my fervent hope is that they catch on quickly.
