Within the premiere of Netflix’s Untamed, Eric Bana‘s Kyle Turner arrives at a pivotal crime scene on horseback, visage grizzled and posture inflexible towards the backdrop of British Columbia impersonating Yosemite Nationwide Park.

With a mixture of snark and reverence, one of many park rangers refers to Turner as “Gary Fucking Cooper,” leaving little doubt of creators Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith’s aspirations.

Regardless of being filmed primarily in Canada and boasting an Australian as its taciturn main man (and a Kiwi as his kindly mentor), Untamed needs to be a throwback slice of Western-infused Americana, self-consciously going after the viewers that has made Yellowstone and its numerous offshoots into certainly one of TV’s most profitable franchises.

Though Netflix is billing it as a restricted collection, Untamed is much from inherently close-ended. It’s the kind of tightly — typically too tightly — constructed six-episode potboiler with epic frontier undertones that ought to discover a receptive viewers amongst followers of mysteries like Sluggish Horses, Reacher and Dept. Q (in addition to viewers who like the overall construction of True Detective, but would favor rather less philosophical noodling).

Untamed has a gripping opening. A few anonymous climbers are ascending El Capitan when a girl’s corpse falls from the summit, almost sending all three plummeting to the bottom and undoubtedly prompting vertigo in delicate viewers, even when it’s clearly performed primarily with CG or compositing (like plenty of parts right here).

The case belongs to Turner. He’s an Investigative Providers Department particular agent, working the park for many years after a presumably temporary profession on the FBI. He isn’t positive, but he thinks he acknowledges the lifeless lady, who has an assortment of complicated markings, together with a gold “X” tattoo and wounds seemingly from an animal assault. A number of parts of the opening don’t totally make sense as soon as the story resolves itself, but you’ll in all probability have forgotten these parts by the top — and the present is ok with you forgetting just a few issues.

Turner has the observational abilities of a quintessential Status TV genius investigator and he shares a semi-recent private trauma with roughly half the leads on these Status TV dramas. Due to his genius, he doesn’t undergo fools, which causes preliminary prickliness with Naya (Lily Santiago), a single mother park ranger and latest transplant from Los Angeles, who will get reluctantly assigned to supply help.

Due to his semi-recent private trauma, and a consuming downside whose severity the present can’t decide, Turner is a continuing supply of concern for longtime father determine Paul Souter (Sam Neill), who could be the park’s head ranger, and ex-wife Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt), an occasional realtor remarried to Scott (Josh Randall), a man so blandly first rate you overlook he exists when he isn’t standing subsequent to Jill.

In extraordinarily handy style, the case involving the lifeless lady is tied to a lacking particular person case from Turner’s previous, to not be confused with a unique lacking particular person from Turner’s previous that’s additionally effervescent to the floor. All of it results in a decision that’s approach too tidy and factors to the collection having approach too few characters for something advanced to unfold, suspect-wise.

Initially, Untamed feints within the course of complexity. When Turner will get to that first crime scene, there’s some expositional banter about jurisdiction. I used to be totally on-board to study the hierarchy between rangers, native authorities, the park superintendent and regardless of the ISB is — able to study the precise issues of fixing a homicide inside a nationwide park.

And there are early hints that Untamed could be ready to have interaction with the staffing nightmares produced by a Nationwide Park Service that has misplaced roughly 1 / 4 of its full-time employees as a part of cuts underneath the present administration. I puzzled: Would Untamed be the primary collection to evoke the black cloud of DOGE layoffs? Would Untamed select to rejoice the basic necessity of defending our nationwide parks or wouldn’t it dismiss them as a lot fats to be trimmed from our bloated federal finances? Just about “Nah,” throughout.

I’m a sucker for a traditional thriller set in an unconventional location, and there are occasional moments when Untamed will get worth out of being nominally set in Yosemite — whether or not it’s changing a genre-standard dive bar with a vacationer lodge or the concept of a pure protect so huge and typically under-explored that squatters can reside off-the-radar and folks can merely go lacking with alarming frequency.

Within the stability, although, the jurisdictional stuff ceases to be notable, the geographical scope is weirdly restricted and it turns into unnerving what number of scenes, nevertheless typically fairly, have the identical one or two acquainted Yosemite postcard places. As a substitute of residing and respiration the setting, Untamed does much less with that pivotal facet of its plot than Spectrum and Paramount+’s in any other case unremarkable Joe Pickett, a few Wyoming recreation warden coping with crime and corruption on the sting of Yellowstone (as performed by Alberta).

It’s a present that begins with topical potential that goes unrealized and, as an alternative, settles for spinning a stable yarn, albeit one propped up by fully too many clichés. From Turner’s tragic backstory — handled as a shock, therefore my being pointlessly coy — to every little thing associated to Wilson Bethel as a former sniper turned animal management agent to the newest iteration of the ol’ “Utilizing a deceased particular person’s face to interrupt into their cellphone” gag, Untamed typically chooses shortcuts over substance.

Nonetheless, the present strikes quick — shortcuts will do this — and, in Bana and Santiago, it has precisely the kind of mismatched partnership at its middle that style reveals of this kind try for. Bana is gruffly efficient, conveying square-jawed authority and salt-and-pepper maturity with out pushing Turner too far into the type of emotional torment that might make Untamed into a personality examine relatively than a whodunit. Santiago counters with a wide-eyed sweetness and plausible sarcasm, offering Untamed with a burst of humor that you simply may not anticipate based mostly on Mark L. Smith’s writing credit on The Revenant and, most not too long ago, Netflix’s brutal American Primeval.

Each Neill and DeWitt have underwritten characters, but they supply doses of heat each time they seem, typically shoehorned into the story like Jill getting introduced in to babysit Naya’s child for no discernible motive. Hints of a worthy but insufficiently utilized ensemble come from the likes of Raoul Max Trujillo, JD Pardo and Alexandra Castillo.

By the finale, principally due to Bana and Santiago, but partially due to the novelty of the setting, I used to be typically engaged with Untamed and even had a thought that not often pops into my head lately: This might stand to be an episode or two longer. So maybe Netflix can rethink that “restricted” factor.