American soap operas are different beasts from their British cousins. While on these shores, our soap operas tend to focus on ordinary people – the cockney residents of Albert Square or the Mancunians treading the cobbles of Coronation Street – Americans prefer their serials to put the rich and powerful through a process of psychological torture. The latest show to demonstrate this cultural difference is The Waterfront, a new Netflix crime drama about the dynastic battles within a fishing/narcotics empire.
Somewhere off America’s Atlantic coast, near the maritime town of Havenport, a drug-running trawler is intercepted by violent goons. This incident creates ripples through the local community, not least the “big family in town”, the Buckleys. Patriarch Harlan (Mindhunter’s Holt McCallany) has been suffering from heart problems following years of hard living, leaving his feckless son Cane (Jake Weary) to run the family business. His plans to wrench their empire out of debt involved colluding in drug smuggling, which leaves them now at the mercy of both a vicious cartel and the DEA agents investigating the piracy. While the Buckley men are getting in over their heads, the women are trying to keep things together. Harlan’s long-suffering wife Mae (Maria Bello), is brokering the sale of some land, Cane’s partner Peyton (Danielle Campbell) is trying to keep an eye on her husband, and the Buckleys’ youngest daughter, Bree (Melissa Benoist), is fighting her own battles with sobriety.
