As I was staying at home during the mid week public holiday, I spent it by watching this series. It was not brand new as it has already been released since 2017, but I only came across it while browsing through Iflix list of series. During this challenging times as part of their effort to keep people stay at home, the streaming provider opened up their services for free on some of their programs which previously could only be watched by paying members. Anyway let's get on with the series now.
Brief Story Line
Jim Worth (Tim Roth - Reservoir Dogs, Rob Roy etc) was a former British police who moved to the small town Little Big Bear in Canada with his wife Angela (Genevieve O'Reilly), teenage daughter Anna (Abigail Lawrie) and the 5 year old boy Petey (Rupert Turnbull) to have peaceful life. Jim had two constables working with him, i.e. the smart and reliable Denise (Sarah Podemski) and the junior Nick (Ryan Kennedy).
However, Jim's peaceful life was short-lived as a large Oil company North Stream Oil, wanted to start production near the town which would bring lots of outside workers. In order to maintain good relationship with the town, Elizabeth Bradshaw (Christina Hendricks - Toy Story 4, Drive etc) was employed by the company, along with the security head Louis Gagnon (Christopher Heyerdahl - Van Helsing TV series etc).
Things soon became out of control for Jim, especially with the appearance of people from his past, including the rather psychotic young man Whitey (Oliver Coopersmith), the older & experienced Frank (Ian Puleston-Davies - Coronation Street TV series etc) and two other guys.
So what would happen to Jim and what kind of mystery he had? And what was North Stream Oil relation with all the problems arising in Little Big Bear? Find them all in this quite interesting mystery & crime drama series.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this series gave me a bit of mixed emotion. At certain times, I was really intrigued but at other times it was not too exciting that made me want to stop watching. But in the end, I stick to the series and watch till the whole first season which had 10 episodes overall. Even the first episode already had this kind of inconsistent tone. The early part was truly exciting only to be followed by very slow story development. However, the last 5 minutes or so was really great and I was hooked by it.
The latter episodes were quite good with few episodes that I really admired like episode 3, 5 and 6. Oh I also liked episode 9 which gave me a better perspective. The season finale had a cliffhanger ending that totally made me wanted to watch the second season immediately (good thing it was already released in 2019 and the whole season also available in Iflix). One thing that I noticed, it seems like the series creator really like the method of showing some climax scene and then continued with events that happened earlier. It was used in several episodes. I am OK with this kind of method, but if it was done too often, I think it lose the element of surprise as I could already guess it after a while.
The story itself was pretty deep, dark and heavy with each character notable for being grey. I think aside from 1 or 2 characters, the rest were not entirely black or white. It was intriguing to see the history of Jim unfolded little by little, with some surprises here and there. The drama in here was quite strong combined with few action scenes (some of them were quite violent). I think this is more suitable for adults due to certain disturbing and mature scenes plus the use of drugs too.
The main attraction of this series was definitely the intricate plot & story with interesting characters plus the mystery surrounding Jim. I am quite sure fans of series with such quality would like this one a lot. But people who love a full action series might feel a bit bored by its sometimes detail dramatic story telling. The cast here did their job really well, in particular Tim Roth's performance. Oh, I also thought Oliver Coopersmith was awesome being the eerie, disturbing and psychotic character. I also enjoy the views of rocky mountains of Canada which looked beautiful. And in case you're wondering what was the title referring to, it would be explained in 1 of the episodes.
Overall this was quite interesting drama mystery series. It had enough surprises and great characters development but personally its too frequent use of the particular method I mentioned above and the rather inconsistent pace made it less enjoyable. For me it was a good enough time killer during this "stay at home" period. So if you like those qualities, then you could give this a try. However, if full action series or police procedural drama is more to your liking, then this might not be suitable for you.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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