Below leads Netflix’s TV chart with a thriller rooted in Newfoundland
Josh Hartnett’s preparation involved local radio, dialect coaching and fishing skills. The six-part series makes its coastal setting part of the premise.
Below opened at number one on Netflix's English-language television chart with 17 million views for October 5–11. The six-episode thriller stars Josh Hartnett as a Newfoundland fisherman facing an unidentified threat from the sea. Its setting is also the part of the production that can be explored most usefully without explaining the mystery.
Netflix reported the result in its October 13 chart update. The figure is the service's viewing metric, rather than a count of individual people.
A place with a working life
Creator Jesse McKeown told Netflix that repeated visits to Newfoundland preceded his decision to set a series there. The attraction combined a rugged, isolated landscape with a community he found warm and funny. The resulting premise follows a fishing town rather than a collection of strangers arriving at an interchangeable remote location.
The official series guide confirms filming in Newfoundland and identifies Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton alongside Hartnett. Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver and Stephen Dunn directed the episodes. All six are available following the October 8 release.
The fishing-town premise gives the sea two jobs. It is the source of a community's livelihood and the source of the unknown threat. That is a more specific tension than a monster merely arriving somewhere picturesque: leaving the water alone would also mean giving up the work around which the town is organised. This follows from the setup, without saying what any character ultimately chooses.
Hartnett prepared through speech and physical work
In Netflix's interview with Hartnett, the actor describes listening to the local radio programme The Broadcast, working with a dialect coach and learning practical fishing skills. The same coach worked with the actors playing his children, helping the family share a linguistic foundation.
Those details matter because an accent is more than an isolated performance trick. Family members need to sound as though they belong to the same place, even when their individual voices differ. Radio also exposes an actor to speech used to discuss ordinary work and local concerns, rather than just a list of pronunciation exercises.
Physical preparation serves a related purpose. Someone whose occupation involves boats and nets should have a relationship with those objects before the dramatic crisis begins. An actor's account of training cannot establish how convincingly a finished scene plays, but it identifies the practical work behind the character's everyday routine.
The unknown sea
“It’s kind of wonderful that we don’t know everything about our entire planet yet”
The mystery can remain a mystery
The Italian Netflix title page provides a local route to the series. Its six-part format makes the viewing commitment clear, without relying on a speculative promise of further seasons or an assertion that every question will be answered.
For a creature thriller, a preview can easily reveal too much simply by describing an image. Knowing the appearance of the threat, the circumstances of an attack or the meaning of a later discovery can change how the opening plays. None of that is needed to understand Below's current appeal as a release: a short season, a specific coastal setting and a cast prepared around the work and speech of that place.
The production’s account of learning a place has a useful counterpart in Animals, whose cast rehearsed inside the house used for filming. One preparation starts with local speech and working skills; the other starts with physical space. In Below, those details give the community a life before the sea becomes a threat.
