Sirens Review: Julianne Moore’s Addictive Cult Drama is Preposterously Entertaining

is enjoying, and the even more gilded one she serves, and from forgetting who she is and where she came from.

All this while Devon must also deal with unwanted visits from her boss and dad, the staff that hate Simone for her high-handed ways, a local police force that is in Michaela’s pocket (which allows for a sterling repeated comic turn from Only Murders in the Building’s Catherine Cohen as Devon’s companion in the drunk tank), and maintain a new, fragile sobriety.

A plot unfurls that is wholly addictive, endlessly entertaining and utterly preposterous. But it is kept from spinning out of control by the sisters’ gradually revealed history and the deepening dynamics in their relationship. Until by about midway, you realize you may have been wrongfooted all along.

Without ever losing its wit or bounce, Sirens becomes a study in family, class, and all sorts of other power struggles, the endless possibilities for good and ill that wealth brings, and the legacies of childhood trauma. It’s also pretty good on the price of sacrifice and how close you should stand to large windows when there are recently released falcons flying about, and to cliff edges when you are a male character in a miniseries named after a group of mythological women said to lure sailors to their doom.

By the end of its narratively and emotionally tight-packed five episodes, Sirens has gained undoubted heft. Adapted for the screen by Molly Smith Metzler from her own play Elemeno Pea, with Colin McKenna and Bekah Brunstetter, it fits the new form perfectly, but still has enough theatricality to allow most of the leads at least a minor monologue in which to flex their muscles and fly.

Its finale manages to satisfy what I suspect will rapidly become a very loyal audience, while leaving open the possibility of a second series. Let the good times roll. Sirens is on Netflix now.