Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Sophie Néilsse, Nicole Maines, Elijah Wood, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Kevin Alves, Alexa Barajas, Luciano Leroux, Mya Lowe, Ella Purnell, Sarah Desjardins, Jane Widdop, Alex Wyndham, Rukiya Bernard, Aiden Stoxx, Simone Kessell, Lauren Ambrose, Nia Sondaya, Rekha Sharma, Nuha Jes Izman, John Reynolds, Jeff Holman.
Television series come and go with alarming ferocity, and to be caught in its glare for more than one series is to admit in modern terms that there is a seismic appreciation for the tale being played out for the benefit of the viewer.
The second series of Yellowjackets, not content with hinting at the darkness that has befallen the group of teenagers who survived the plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, ramps up the tension with ferocious and aggressive style that pulls the viewer into the world of cannibalism, the drama of sects, and the descent into insanity and anarchy as emotions continue to spill over long after some of the girls have been rescued and returned to a life that is far from normal.
Series such as Yellowjackets, with its story told from various points of view and the narrative jumping back and forth as explanations for behaviour are sought can suffer from what some perceived to inflict damage on the whole brand in cases such as Lost for example. Yellowjackets though seems to have learned a lesson from its illustrious dramatic partner. It retains the antagonism towards even the most likeable of characters, it shows the flux in relationships as sides are drawn and reevaluated by admission of failing and the reveal of secrets, but it is not afraid to go down the route of being compact, of offering the viewer a fixed number of episodes in which the writing has to retain its strict regime of pinpoint narrative.
Gruesome but pivotal to the show’s success is its desire to conjure up images in the mind of the viewer, memories perhaps of desperation that come from a modern sense of familiarity, contempt, and fear, of knowing that hunger is a driving force more keenly ignited than of possession. It is in the reveal of such agony, coupled with the need to belong to something that which can keep the hunger in check, which makes this female led version of Lord of the Flies so keenly admired.
Once more the core of the adult group, Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Tawny Cypress, along with new additions such as the terrific Nicole Maines and Elijah Wood frame the eye to understand the fall out of the experience decades after the accident, and with Sophie Néilsse, Sophie Thatcher and Samantha Hanratty all combining their performances inside the initial commencement of madness of their actions as the younger selves in the unforgiving forest, so the incredible force of narrative is allowed to strike at the heart of the viewer time and time again.
A series that is bold, unafraid, filled with unquenching despair, and fierce upsetting of the natural world, Yellowjackets is American drama at its most alluring.
Ian D. Hall