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Yellowjackets SKY/NOW DRAMA

Take a generous measure of The Lord Of The Flies and mix in a pinch of Lost, a dash of Desperate Housewives and just a smidgeon of Big Little Lies and you have the recipe for a genre-bending hit.

In the first episode of this ten-part drama, we’re introduced to various members of a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team, the Yellowjackets, in 1996. They’re thrilled to make ‘the nationals’ but the plane taking them to the tournament comes down in the remote Canadian wilderness.

Meanwhile, in the present day, a journalist wants to know from one of the survivors, Shauna, now a housewife, what really happened out there.

‘The plane crashed. A bunch of my friends died. The rest of us starved and scavenged and prayed for 19 months until they finally found us, and that’s the end of the story,’ Shauna insists.

But that’s definitely not the end of the story – we know from the beginning that terrible things happened after the crash.

The show flips between the timelines and mixes mystery, horror, teen coming-of-age drama and black comedy to hugely enjoyable effect. The cast are excellent and include Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse as adult and teenage Shauna, and Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher as Natalie, but watch out especially for great work from Christina Ricci (left) and Sammi Hanratty, who play the oddball Misty.