Josh Hartnett leads Below, a 6-episode Netflix miniseries set to debut on Oct. 8. He plays Calvin Penney, a fisherman in Snooks Arm whose family has lived there for 40 years, which gives the release a rooted local frame instead of a generic thriller setup.
Calvin Penney in Snooks Arm
Calvin uses his old fishing boat to gather chunks of polar ice after they calve off from glaciers and drift south into Snooks Arm's waters. The local vodka distillery pays well for pure glacier ice, but his latest glacier turns out to be something else entirely, turning a side hustle into the series' central problem.
Jesse McKeown, who created the series, calls it “Jaws set in rural Newfoundland.” He opens it in the 1960s, when Canadian fisheries began to modernize and many rural Newfoundlanders were resettled into designated growth centers, so the show is working with a long historical pressure point rather than a simple monster premise.
Jesse McKeown and resettlement
Snooks Arm sits inside that pressure. The community has been affected by climate change and overfishing, yet the town is also debating whether to accept an offer from the provincial government for resettlement, with a threshold of support required before the move becomes official.
McKeown says, “For anyone who grew up in Newfoundland, that image of the house floating across the Atlantic Ocean is very familiar.” He also says, “It was a big piece of the history of the last 75 years. The resettlement program still continues to this day.”
Oct. 8 on Netflix
“Now it's very democratic. The town votes to stay or leave just like in the show, and a certain threshold of the town has to agree to it to be officially resettled by the government, but that wasn't always the case,” he says. He adds, “Back in the day, there was a lot more pressure. It was quite violent and coercive. It's a very difficult part of Newfoundland history, and a lot of people were affected by that. I wanted to open the show with that.”
That makes Below more than a standard Oct. 8 genre drop. The series asks what happens when a community already under strain from the sea is forced to decide whether it can stay put, and Calvin Penney's latest glacier turns that question into the only one that really matters.
