Stream It Or Skip It?
There’s a certain feeling that the multigenerational drama genre usually has; it tends to move slow, revealing the secrets the family and their friends have in bits and pieces. But the feeling you tend to get from them is a certain warmth, even if the members of the family aren’t getting along all the time. That tends to fill in the plot gaps, as we see in a new family drama from South Africa.
SUMMERTIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A calm, rolling ocean. We pan up and see the village of Simon’s Town in South Africa, and a car is driving on the road along the water.
The Gist: Martin Field (Frank Rautenbach) is moving back to his hometown with his son Tristian (Jan Combrink) and daughter Lucy (Evangelina Hallock). After his wife Julia (Amalia Uys) died, he wanted to fulfill the promise of returning to Simon’s Town, where they both grew up, met and fell in love. But for most of the kids’ lifetimes, they’ve been living in Cypress. Lucy sees it as a new adventure, but Tristian isn’t happy about the move, especially because he’s leaving his girlfriend behind.
They arrive at the home of Martin’s parents, Jack (Andre Jacobs), a former naval officer who’s not a huge fan of the fact that his son is a marine conservationist, and Wilma (Terry Norton). His younger brother Gavin (Tyrone Keogh) lives there, as well. Wilma has already volunteered Martin’s services to the local penguin conservatory, as Martin inadvertently finds out when he’s berated for almost running over one of the flightless birds wandering through town.
When he goes to find a boat to start fulfilling his and Julia’s goal to clean up the local bay, he finds a rusty vessel on the market that looks familiar to him. It’s currently owned by Rebecca Solomons (Monique Rockman), a friend from their school days. She was a chef in New York whose restaurants earned Michelin stars, but gave it up and came back home to run the family restaurant when her father died. She also inherited the boat. At the moment, she and Gavin are together, but in a very casual way that Gavin isn’t 100 percent in favor of.
Martin is of course haunted by Julia’s death, as he finds out when he goes on a dive with Gavin and Rebecca. He still has resentment towards the kind of father Jack was, and builds new resentments towards him because Jack still thinks his fortysomething son is immature and irresponsible. But the tension with Tristian trumps all of that, and it comes to a head when Tristian gets into a scrape with Wesley Du Plessis (Matthew Vey), whose father Hannes (Morné Visser) seems to have influence in the town. Tristian ends up running away after his girlfriend books a plane ticket for him to go back to Cypress.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Summertide is along the lines of Everwood, or more recent shows like Sullivan’s Crossing.
Our Take: Summertide is one of those slow-moving, easygoing shows that has a general plot to start out with — here, it’s someone returning to his hometown after the death of his wife — but ends up digging deep into the histories of its characters, from multigenerational family strife to old and new romantic relationships. In its first episode, the show manages to do a good job of establishing the world around Martin Field, even if there are a couple of storytelling missteps along the way.
The missteps aren’t minor, mainly because they feel like they’d solve a plot point too soon if followed logically. Mostly it involves Tristian running away. We didn’t even realize the family used to live in Cypress until we saw the plane ticket from Tristian’s girlfriend appear on his phone, and we looked up the airport code. Then, we heard the word “Cypress” at least 4 times. That seemed like an odd bit of writing to us.
Then Martin and Rebecca drive around train stations looking for Tristian, when what they should have done is wait for him at the airport; it’s not like they didn’t know where he was headed. Finally, Tristian shows back up, but we have no idea if he came back on his own (he did get kissed by a girl in Wesley’s friend group) or if someone found him.
The reason why we are going into such detail on one plot point is because we are hoping against hope that it’s not indicative of the writing for the series. As it is, we’re getting very sketchy information on how Julia died, though it may be tied to diving or the water. Rebecca might want more from Gavin and vice versa, but she thinks he wants to stay casual; her lowered expectations are confirmed, at least to the audience, when Gavin encounters a waitress (Tanya van Graan) that he also seems to have a romantic connection with.
Given the fact that the first season of Summertide consists of 52 episodes (!), there may be a good reason why these details are being doled out in tiny bits. But the good thing about not speeding the plot along is that it gives the relationships between everyone in the Field family time to build, grow and transform. There certainly is a warmth in the chemistry amongst the cast, even when their characters are fighting with each other over old and new beefs. That’s what is going to carry the series as the entanglements are explored.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: As Rebecca sees Martin and his family watching penguins from the bow of the boat she just sold to them, she turns and walks away with sadness in her eyes. There is definitely an element of what might have been in that sadness.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the penguins that walk around the town (if you’re thinking, “Penguins? In South Africa?”, watch the docuseries Penguin Town to find out more).
Most Pilot-y Line: The fight between Tristian and Wesley starts for very dumb reasons. Then again, they’re teenage boys, so it doesn’t take much to set them off, does it?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Summertide is a show that you need to be in for the long haul, because the storytelling isn’t going to move that quickly. What should carry you, though, is the South African scenery, the warm multigenerational drama, and the occasional penguin spotting.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
