‘Sirens’: A study in class and bad parenting

Set in the filthy rich environs of New England, the show depicts the changing fortunes of Michaela Kell (Moore), the second wife of the hedge-fund billionaire Peter (Kevin Bacon). Right from the word go, there is a hint of Mrs de Winters (from Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca) about Michaela. The Rebecca angle gets subtly, but surely, played along the course of five tightly written episodes by Molly Smith Metzler, based on Elemeno Pea, her 2011 play.

If you haven’t watched the series yet, you’re probably already thinking of The White Lotus (2021; streaming on JioHotstar) or The Perfect Couple (2024; Netflix), both of which cover similar ground. Which is mostly fair since, despite all its woo-woo-ness, Sirens does have a suffocatingly thick air of suspense about it. The troubled sister dynamics between Devon (Meghann Fahy, The White Lotus) and Simone (Milly Alcock), leading back to a childhood scarred by terrible parenting, not only provides fodder for an engaging psychological thriller but also for a clash of the classes.

It all starts with Devon setting off in search of her sister, who has ghosted her for months, and ignored her pleas to help take care of their father Bruce (Bill Camp gives a chillingly real performance), who is suffering from dementia. When Simone sends her an edible arrangement instead of volunteering to do her part, Devon is enraged. Her life is already a wreck. A recovering alcoholic, she is sleeping with her college friend-turned-boss Raymond, who is married with kids. After being locked up by the police multiple times for unruly behaviour, Devon has nothing to lose. So, she arrives on Michaela’s island uninvited, only to be horrified by the web into which her little sister has got herself entangled.

Roxana Hadidi, in Vulture, accurately described Sirens as “a series about culty, self-help-y, extremely white women doing culty self-help-y extremely white women things." Michaela, for instance, not only follows a strict regimen of diet and exercise but also ensures that no one under her watch strays from the path of clean eating. There’s a hilarious scene where the staff scarf on burgers, hidden away from the CCTV cameras, because carbs are forbidden by Michaela.

Yet under the veneer of all the absurdity and tyranny of Michaela’s rule, lurks a profoundly disturbing truth—her pathological insecurity and will to do anything to protect her place in Peter’s life. During the day, Michaela spends her time rescuing and rehabilitating raptors. At night, she is wide awake wondering if her husband is cheating on her.

With Simone’s help, she does some serious sleuthing to check if the chocolates brought by him for her are really from his trip to Tokyo, or subbed from an outlet in New York. The answers to this investigation turn out to be at once simple and complicated.

Setting aside the laughs and thrills, Sirens offers a scathing indictment of poor parenting. Whether it’s Bruce’s treatment of Simone as a little girl, or Peter’s neglect of his children from his first wife, there are layers here that would give a therapist a field day. One of the more difficult questions that Sirens deals with is caregiving, especially when parents have been cruel and uncaring to their offspring when they were young but, in the winter of their lives, they need to be looked after by those very children. Devon’s insistence on Simone doing her bit for the father whose neglect had led her to grow up, abused and humiliated, in foster care is a thorny point of contention. At once triggering and an inescapable reality, it’s a question that haunts the viewer well beyond the series.

The ending is clever and leaves room for a second season. Given the amount of speculation and theories that the series has inspired on social media—check out the Reddit threads after you’ve seen it—hopefully there’s more trickery by the sirens awaiting us.

‘Sirens’ is streaming on Netflix.

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