Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Kevin Alves, Alexa Barajas, Mya Lowe, Ella Purnell, Sarah Desjardins, Jane Widdop, Alex Wyndham, Rukiya Bernard, Aiden Stoxx, Keeya King, Rekha Sharma, Peter Gadiot, Princess Davis, Jeff Holman, Andres Soto, Jack DePew.
The lost make for excellent news, the overwhelming desire for hope in the face of adversity is addictive, people become embroiled in the lives of those who go missing in mysterious circumstances, the dedication that television voyeurs and newspaper readers show in finding even the smallest morsal of information can lead to a raft of conspiracy theories and assumptions to which the truth only adds fuel to the ever-growing speculation.
Yellowjackets follows on in the tradition of many of television, cinema, and indeed literature’s finest moments of highlighting the trials faced those who become lost, separated from civilisation by design or accident. We have no doubt been thrilled by the ordeals that befell Robinson Crusoe, of the fear that creeps upon the reader when they read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, or moving forward the seismic multi season adventure that encompasses Lost, or the terrific The Martian which captured the sense of isolation and the resolve to be found.
Like Lord of the Flies, Yellowjackets is not reluctant in taking the viewer down a path of distress as the fragile human psyche takes its toll on those who survived the privately hired plane crash, and as the numbers begin to whittle down, as life becomes scares, so the lives of those who live into adulthood and marriage, soon become embroiled in conjecture and consistent whispers that dog them.
It is normal to be interested in the lives of those who survive extreme trauma, the mind wants to understand how a person can endure hardship, perhaps starvation, the persistent shadow of death. When the answers are consistently bland, almost rehearsed, it is then reasonable to believe that some other factor must have been at play; after all nobody can surely survive such extreme, life-threatening circumstances daily without having tipped their hat in the region of insanity.
With a cast that truly conveys the belief in madness faced, the audience is gifted with a set of characters that supremely portrayed. The casting of Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci is sublime, and when placed alongside their younger selves, especially in Sophie Nélisse, Samantha Hanratty, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sophie Thatcher, the sense of drama, of progressive collective psychosis in isolation is framed with genuine concern and sympathetic reason.
A classic of television, and in its first series is already unmissable.
Ian D. Hall