Sounds, The (TV Mini-series)

New Zealand 2020, 352 minutes
Dir. Peter Stebbings
Rating: [M] Violence & offensive Language
Genres: Television, Drama, Suspense/Crime

Feat. Matt Whelen, Rachelle Lefevre, Matt Nable, Emily Piggford, Peter Elliott, Vanessa Rare, John Bach, Morgana O’Reilly, Tandi Wright

Aroview: Kiwi mystery drama series from writer Sarah-Kate Lynch (800 WORDS), about a Canadian couple who move to the Pelorus Sound / Te Hoiere region in the Marlborough Sounds to escape oppressive family tensions. When one of them vanishes off a yacht they were both sleeping in, an investigation is mounted and unsettling facts about him begin to emerge.

The eldest son of a powerful Vancouver business family (whose poisonous patriarch is played by NZ acting legend John Bach), his plans to organise the bank-rolling of a salmon-farming enterprise are received with suspicion and hostility by a few of the local residents, and after he goes missing, the ugly side of his family surfaces to disrupt the pristine locale.

Filmed in Auckland and Northland rather than the Sounds, this is a polished Canadian-NZ co-production that clearly has an international audience in mind, and stands up amongst the wealth of other similarly themed crime shows.