“Stay away from the water,” Josh Hartnett warns in the pulse-racing new trailer for Below. What, exactly, lurks beneath the surface is unknown but — if the sneak peek is any indication — destruction, stormy mysteries, and tangled secrets are about to bubble up.
In the six-episode thriller series from creator Jesse McKeown (a writer on The Umbrella Academy and 19-2), a small Canadian town is the target of a sea creature, and the terrorized residents will have to find the strength to fight back to protect their community and a vanishing way of life. Leading the fight are Hartnett (Trap, Oppenheimer, The Virgin Suicides), Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things, The Souvenir Part II), and Mackenzie Davis (Station Eleven, Speak No Evil). The series arrives on Netflix Oct. 8, but you can watch the trailer now.
“I’ve been coming to Newfoundland for many years, and it’s become a part of my life,” McKeown says about where the idea for a series set in a small fishing town came from. “I just always felt like I wanted to set something here, that this would be a great place for something big and something kind of epic. It’s such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways. But then there’s also this other side to it, which is that the community is so warm and the people are so funny and unique and there are so many eccentricities about the place.”
Hartnett was also captivated by the place and story. “I read the first two scripts in less than an hour,” he says. “The voice was so clear, the concept was so engaging, and the character was fantastic. I’d never read anything like it before. I had never read anything that was set in Newfoundland before. I didn’t understand the long history of Newfoundland being its own country and having its own dialect and its own very specific ancestry.”
Read on to find out more about the unique place — and the upcoming series set there.
Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) is a big‑hearted but stubborn fisherman, living in a small Newfoundland town, who’s still haunted by his father’s mysterious death from decades ago. When an unidentified sea creature begins terrorizing his hometown, Calvin must fight to hold his close-knit community together. Determined to keep his son Wade (Charlie Heaton) and the rest of his family safe, he teams up with a visiting marine researcher (Mackenzie Davis) to confront the creature and reveal the island’s buried secrets before it’s too late. Blending local myth, thrilling suspense, and heartfelt humor, this twisty six-part limited series dives into themes of family, community, and change — both terrifying and inevitable.
The series is written by Karen Walton (Orphan Black), Perry Chafe (Saint-Pierre), and Natty Zavitz (Edging). Jamie Childs (The Sandman, His Dark Materials), Helen Shaver (The Penguin, Station Eleven), and Stephen Dunn (Closet Monster, Queer as Folk) directed the episodes.
The show’s executive producers include: showrunner McKeown, Jessica Rhoades (Black Mirror, Station Eleven) through her company Pacesetter, Chris Hatcher (The Madness, Sweet Angel Baby), Hartnett, Childs, Louise Sutton (Black Mirror, Waiting for the Out), and Sharon Hall (The Expanse, Utopia).
“Jesse’s bold, ambitious vision offers thrills galore, with the heart of a family drama,” Netflix Canada content directors Danielle Woodrow and Tara Woodbury said. “We can’t wait to transport our members to coastal Newfoundland with this timely story about community, resilience, and adaptability.”
Hartnett (Pearl Harbor, Penny Dreadful, Black Hawk Down) stars as Calvin Penney, a big-hearted but burdened bayman from Snooks Arm, Newfoundland. A single father of three, he’s desperate to keep his fractured family together.
“He is a guy who has had a series of setbacks and tragedies in his life starting at a young age,” says Hartnett. “He’s felt that he’s cursed and that his place in the world is untenable, that even his community doesn’t see the point of him, and he lives in a very small community, so he feels untethered.”
In addition to Hartnett, the series stars:
You sure can. Check out the action-packed trailer above and watch Hartnett uncover the many mysterious secrets that lie just beneath the Newfoundland ocean. The trailer opens on an unsettling note. A house is being towed across the sea, when it’s suddenly and inexplicably dragged underwater. “I just thought that it was so dreamlike and haunting,” says McKeown about the first scene of the series. “[It was] the idea of, oh, wouldn’t it be great to start with this migration, this moment of uncertainty for this family, and then have this horrible thing take place? That was the very beginning.”
Yes, check out Hartnett, Davis, and Heaton in action in the first-look photos throughout this article.
The series was filmed in Newfoundland, Canada.
“Newfoundland and Labrador’s rich history and stunning landscapes make it the ideal canvas for a project of this magnitude,” said Dr. Andrew Furey, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. “The province’s commitment to storytelling, talented crews, and unique beauty ensure that this series will capture the spirit of our province. We are excited to be part of bringing this incredible vision to the screen.”
Adds Laura Churchill, chief executive officer of Picture NL, the film commission for the province, “Newfoundland and Labrador has long been home to incredible stories, and we’re thrilled to see Netflix bring this ambitious new series to life here. The province’s breathtaking landscapes, skilled crews, and deep storytelling traditions make it the perfect setting for a project of this scale. We look forward to working with the team to showcase all that Newfoundland and Labrador has to offer.”
All six episodes of Below rise from the deep on Oct. 8.
