Untamed is a blunt force thriller, set in Yosemite national park in California, starring Eric Bana as a macho special agent who prefers silence to talking and horses to motorised vehicles. It is perfectly serviceable though oddly retro – not just because it scoffs at petrol engines, but because it feels as if it could have been made in the 1990s. Even a crucial smartphone plotline doesn’t come into it until very close to the end, and although park rangers have become a political hot potato in the US, national politics emphatically do not exist here.
That makes Untamed an undemanding watch, but don’t expect much depth. It’s as easy on the eye as it is straightforward. Bana is Kyle Turner, technically not a park ranger, even though he’s dressed like one, but an ISB Special Agent, which gives him extra-special cop powers. Devotees of detective dramas will be shocked to learn that Turner is brusque, rude and has a taste for bourbon that doesn’t have any impact on his professional capacity whatsoever. He is haunted by a family tragedy. His personal relationships are poor. He is, of course, excellent at what he does.
This makes a fairytale of both detective work and the great outdoors, which I can’t say I mind too much. Turner is so at one with Yosemite that he can find strands of hair or individual beads in the vast swathes of wilderness, all 300,000 hectares of it of it. I can barely find my keys in the hallway, never mind a crucial clue partly buried in a vast national park, but that is why I don’t ride to work on a horse.
It begins with a pair of climbers on El Capitan summit, whose steady ascent is interrupted by the falling body of a young woman, who gets tangled up in their ropes. Was she chased by an animal, or is it more sinister than that? Naturally Turner goes above and beyond, scoffing at warnings of lightning to examine the dangling body. He takes note of the foliage in her hand and where it grows and notes the lack of animal tracks on the summit. He pays attention to the details, like Bear Grylls with a badge. He says things like, “This is not LA. Things happen different out here,” and, “You can’t spell wilderness without wild.”
That gives a decent idea of what you’re in for. It is unapologetically meat and two veg, sincere and far-fetched. Initially, it looks to be a case-of-the-week setup, not dissimilar to Elsbeth or Poker Face, but reverse-engineered to have the humour sucked out of it. The body of the young woman turns out be a gateway into a wider conspiracy, a criminal underbelly lurking beneath the tourist-playground parts of the national park. There is a sense that it has ambitions to be True Detective-like, or at least, early True Detective, and there is a touch of rural noir to it too. Turner is haunted by his past, and trapped in the wilderness by his own demons. His young sidekick, Vasquez (a very good Lily Santiago), formerly an inner-city LA cop running from her own issues, thinks he has just moved into his cabin, because it is full of boxes. He has been there for years.
The supporting cast is strong. Sam Neill is Turner’s boss, friend and ally Captain Souter, trying to defend Turner from the PR-led bureaucracy of the park’s superintendent, whose main goal is to keep tourist numbers up, which means keeping any sense of peril out of the headlines. Rosemarie DeWitt is Turner’s ex-wife, who still receives phone calls from him in the middle of the night. Though Untamed is largely confined to trails and cabins, it occasionally busts the budget on a helicopter or an explosion.
Still, as serviceable as it is, it leaves the impression of having once had the bones of a more elegant thriller, softened to become a more standard, more palatable prospect. It’s twisty, but it doesn’t take much to guess what those twists are, and where they will lead. Turner is the flawed hero upon whom everyone else must depend. The female characters are mostly troublesome, and there to be saved; if you find long, lingering shots of women’s bodies on mortuary slabs gratuitous, this is not the show for you.
This is US television in 2025, then: manly, gruff and outdoorsy. It opens with a sweeping shot of forests and mountains, before the American flag moves into the centre of the frame. There are bear attacks, gunfights and near-biblical levels of vengeance. It’s not the smartest of thrillers, but those mountains sure are lovely to look at.
Untamed is on Netflix now