Sirens (2025)

Over five taut hourlong episodes, “Sirens” scrupulously resolves these riddles while introducing even dicier dilemmas and upending audience expectations. The initial song that draws you in is honest — Netflix‘s limited series is crackling entertainment, alive with secrets, twists, and humor.

The overall aura is compelling enough to keep you watching. So yes, the song of "Sirens" will have you hooked for all five episodes, which start chaotic and get more unhinged from there. Comparisons to HBO's "Lotus" are unavoidable.

Mythology, feminism and three terrific female performances intertwine to defy predictability and expectations.

Fully Netflixed by Metzler into a five-episode adaptation, the final product is a triumph of the popular-novel-to-series genre: funny, caustic, absurd.

The fun lies in picking apart which things that happen in the Cliff House are truly abnormal, and which parts just look deeply weird to Devon, and to the other working-class visitors from Buffalo who end up on the island in the later episodes. .... The cast of this farce, which is stacked with familiar movie and TV actors, is having the time of their lives.

Sirens is the perfect getaway: a beautifully shot, deranged escape from reality that digs into the strange dynamic formed between three women who are far too close for their own good. 

Sirens works because it leans into the absurdity of the story and the awfulness of most of the characters, making the show a dark comedy that’s truly comedic.

The show’s appeal lies in its complicated depiction of bickering and bruising sisters, with prickly performances from Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock giving the series an alluring and distinguishing jolt.

As a whole, “Sirens” simply has too many tonal switchbacks for all of them to work, even if the ones that land create a unique and thrillingly unpredictable energy. Viewers will nonetheless find themselves under the series’ hypnotic hold.

It’s a blackly comic affair, and while it’s nowhere near the level of Succession or the first two White Lotus series, it whips along with a healthy sense of the absurd.

While the fifth and final episode leans into this too much, the show never overstays its welcome. “Sirens” is a true limited series in an era where they’re pretty scarce, and although it lacks bite at times, in the end, it still manages to pack a thrilling punch.

It's never quite clear what kind of show Sirens wants to be, which can be distracting, but it can also be as much a feature as a bug. Sirens keeps viewers guessing where it's going to go next and who, ultimately, its characters are at heart — or if they even know. Maybe it's apt that the show itself feels like it's having an identity crisis at times.

I really would have liked to see more of a focus on this tone in lieu of the melodramatic, soap opera-like atmosphere it keeps coming back to. That's not to say its drama is poorly executed.

Though the tonal shifts between Simone’s sincere commitment to serenity and Devon’s messy hijinks can be disorienting, the show is most effective when it’s not taking itself 100 percent seriously.

As far as sagas of the untrustworthy rich and famous go, it’s an eminently watchable tale of greed, ambition, deception, and trauma (So. Much. Trauma.), aided in no small part by a big, bold, charming performance from Meghann Fahy.

The ending I found half-satisfying, or half-frustrating, from character to character, but there are great, committed performances along the way, and I was far more than halfway entertained.

Ms. Fahy makes her [Devon] extremely funny, and a great foil for Ms. Moore’s faux-ethereal harpy. .... Their mutual, verbal torturing of each other is fun to watch, but where “Sirens” is going as a mystery will remain a mystery for some time. It is really the actors who make the series watchable, if less than believable.

Ultimately, there's a lot of potential in Sirens. There are comedic moments that made me laugh out loud, scenes that really made me think and question a woman's place in society, and instances when you can see just how intricate Metzler's work on this story is.

Devon seems to possess the only truly reliable moral compass among the main characters as the series heads towards its shockingly conventional soap opera ending. The climax is such a copout that it makes you want to ascribe deeper meaning to it. But what it signals most clearly is a dearth of ideas.

It often feels like a Hallmark Channel movie. “Sirens” swims from campy to grounded and back, feeling sometimes refreshingly unpredictable and other times confusingly disjointed.

As traumas surface, the series veers about the road a touch chaotically, tonally speaking. I enjoyed it far more when it’s not being emotively overwrought, more when it’s simply being amusing.

Ultimately, "Sirens" is another casualty of the bloated runtime of a story that should've been a two-hour movie at best. It would've worked better as a tighter, less sprawling piece, and should've focused more on the banality of its subject matter.

Metzler too often stops short of true wit and strangeness. This makes for an inconsistent tone, from which we’re happily distracted by a dazzling backdrop, a twisty plot, and diva-worthy performances—all elements that make Sirens just as fun to watch as the shows it means to critique, but not much more insightful.

As an eat-the-rich satire Sirens doesn’t entirely work; neither does it fully pull off its attempts to grapple with family dynamics and generational trauma. But as a colourful, unpredictable slice of slightly bonkers summer escapism? Like the siren songs of Greek myth, it’s irresistibly alluring.

For a series interested in dissecting the role of caretaking, Sirens feels like it’s been left to drift into too many directions, never cohering into the kind of thrilling binge watch it so desperately wishes to be.

Sirens tries to follow in The White Lotus’ footsteps with soapy drama in a luxury setting, but the satire falls flat, and the tone is hopelessly jumbled.

The series has so much escapist potential in its initial episodes, poking at the absurdities of abundant wealth and ladling in so much silly foreboding, only to squander it because the series is unable to create anything resembling an emotional payoff.

The route “Sirens” showrunner Molly Smith Metzler takes here is to go more vulgar with the humor, which is fine and often funny enough. But this efficient, if somewhat rushed, five-episode limited series also wants to get serious about heavy subjects, and the two tones don’t just clash but magnetically repel one another into different dimensions.

A big, beautiful bore.

It may be a failure, but it’s an interesting one. Most of the shows in this corner of the streaming economy seem content to stick to a basic formula. Metzler’s out here trying a whole lot of things. They don’t fit together, yet the experiment at least leaves an impression.

There were times, especially in the first few episodes, when I appreciated how brazenly Metzler was tackling so many disparate elements, but by the time those elements failed to cohere as anything other than superficial irony, my attention was mostly being held by a very strong, insufficiently served cast.