Netflix’s mysterious new thriller series gets first look

Featuring a Stranger Things star, the show is set in a small town on the Canadian island of Newfoundland.

Landing on the streaming service in October, the six-part limited series follows Calvin Penney (Hartnett), a big‑hearted but stubborn fisherman and single father of three. Living in a small town on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, he is haunted by his father's mysterious death decades ago.

When an unidentified sea creature begins terrorising his hometown, Calvin must fight to hold his close-knit community together.

Josh Hartnett in Below

Created by Jesse McKeown (a writer on The Sinner and The Umbrella Academy), the title of Below had been kept under wraps until now.

Alongside Davis, Hartnett, and Heaton, the show's cast includes Kaleb Horn (Revival), Rohan Campbell (Silent Night, Deadly Night), Ruby Stokes (Lockwood & Co), and Willow Kean (The King Tide).

In a statement to the Netflix website Tudum, McKeown said of the series' origins: "I’ve been coming to Newfoundland for many years, and it’s become a part of my life.

"I just always felt like I wanted to set something here, that this would be a great place for something big and something kind of epic.

"It’s such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways. But then there’s also this other side to it, which is that the community is so warm and the people are so funny and unique and there are so many eccentricities about the place.”

On his reasons for joining the project, Hartnett added: “I read the first two scripts in less than an hour.

“The voice was so clear, the concept was so engaging, and the character was fantastic. I’d never read anything like it before.

"I had never read anything that was set in Newfoundland before. I didn’t understand the long history of Newfoundland being its own country and having its own dialect and its own very specific ancestry.”

Having filmed in Newfoundland, Netflix says the show blends "local myth, thrilling suspense, and heartfelt humour," while diving into "themes of family, community, and change — both terrifying and inevitable".

All six episodes of Below will release on Netflix on 8 October. For more new first-look images from the series, visit Tudum's website.

Main images via Netflix