My wife and I saw Untamed, a six-episode mini-series on Netflix the past few nights. The scenery was breathtaking -- the narrative takes place in Yosemite National Park, and as the protagonist Kyle Turner points out, most visitors get to see no more than ten percent of it -- the acting was excellent, and the plot pretty good, too, slow winding but deep, and coming together memorably in the end.
[Slight spoilers ahead ... ]
Kyle, played by Eric Bana, is a National Parks Agent, investigating what could be the murder of a young woman who falls off a mountain to her death. He has a troubled past -- a lot of the residents of the Park, legal and otherwise, do -- but the investigation would have been difficult even if he was the happiest guy in the world. He has a newbie as a partner, Naya Vasquez (played by Lily Santiago), Paul Souter (played by Sam Neill) is his boss, and Jill Bodwin (played by Rosemarie Dewitt) is his former wife, with whom he shares a very tragic past. It's always good to see Bana and Neill on the screen, Dewitt was excellent (she was in Mad Men), and the strong performance by Santiago (whom I recall seeing in La Brea) indicates a fine career ahead.
As I said, just about every major character in this story has a troubled past, which of course influences and spills into the investigation, and also can sometimes be a bit too much and unclear if you're intent on following what could be a murder investigation. Some of the characters are villains who may not be murderers. Others work for the law and can be just the reverse. Although some of this flirts with confusion, the ending is both shocking and satisfying, and well worth the short six-episode wait.
But as I said at the outset, the biggest takeaway of Untamed is the spectacular scenery and cinematography. The series was so well photographed, you could practically breath it through the screen.
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