YELLOWJACKETS Season One
Mountains Of Madness
UK Sky Atlantic, streaming now US Showtime, streaming now
Showrunners Ashley Lyle,
Bart Nickerson
Cast Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, Melanie Lynskey
This buzzy series is viscerally exciting. It follows the plight of an all-female team of high school soccer players in 1996, after their plane crashes deep in the Canadian mountains. Forced to fend for themselves, the girls grow increasingly desperate and begin to turn on each other.
But that’s only half the story. We know from the off that at least four of the team survive into the present day: Shauna, Misty, Taissa and Natalie. The truth of how they made it out and what happened to the rest of the girls is methodically teased out over the course of the season. It’s not as straightforward as you might think, and that’s before you factor in dark hints of cannibalism and a supernatural evil at work in the woods.
Yellowjackets is a stew of influences. Lord Of The Flies is an obvious one, as is Heathers. Twin Peaks is in there too. But most of all, it feels like a riot grrrl inversion of Lost. Like that show, it uses flashbacks and flashforwards to show how the disaster affected the survivors. The mystery is important – and in the moments where hints of something ancient and eldritch creep in, thrillingly eerie – but it’s the present-day drama that’s really compelling.
It helps that the large cast is uniformly terrific, fully conveying both the horror of their situation and the shifts in social hierarchy throughout. Special mention, however, must go to Christina Ricci as Misty Quigley. In the ’90s sections, young Misty is sympathetically played by Samantha Hanratty. In the present, Ricci makes her feel like the most dangerous person on Earth, all show tunes and fentanyl cigarettes. She encapsulates Yellowjackets’ vicious wit, complex characterisation and ability to surprise at every turn. What a character, and what a show.
The series was originally conceived to take place in the ’70s and ’90s, but was eventually moved into the present day.