Sirens (2025)

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.