Sirens is a tale of two sisters and a superrich villain whose cult-like lifestyle threatens to come between them. Older sister Devon (Meghann Fahy – yes, of White Lotus fame, taking a much meatier part this time and running with it) is a semi-functioning alcoholic who is caring for their increasingly difficult father while working a minimum wage job at the local falafel joint and banging her married boss on the side. When she sends little sister Simone (House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock and astonishing child actor in Tim Minchin’s heartbreaking comedy Upright) a plea for help when their father is diagnosed with dementia, Simone responds by sending an edible arrangement (or fancy fruit basket, if you’re British). Devon duly sets off on the long journey to her sister’s new place of employ with the clear aim of ramming said fruit arrangement up her arse and asking questions later.
What she finds when she gets there, however, requires all fruit/arse-ramming plans to be put on hold and older-sister instincts to take over. Simone is the live-in PA to socialite and raptor conservationist Michaela Kell, played by Julianne Moore at her best and most unsettling. Michaela – or Kiki, as Simone is delighted to be allowed to call her – is married to hedge fund billionaire Peter (Kevin Bacon) and has a tribe of acolytes; Devon immediately pegs her as a cult leader who has Simone in thrall. She starts a campaign to save her sister from Michaela, from her boyfriend (Peter’s flaky best friend Ethan, played by Glenn Howerton), from the lure of the lifestyle she is enjoying, and the even more gilded one she serves, and from forgetting who she is and where she came from.
All this while Devon must also deal with unwanted visits from her boss and dad, the staff that hate Simone for her high-handed ways, a local police force that is in Michaela’s pocket (which allows for a sterling repeated comic turn from Only Murders in the Building’s Catherine Cohen as Devon’s companion in the drunk tank), and maintain a new, fragile sobriety.
A plot unfurls that is wholly addictive, endlessly entertaining and utterly preposterous. But it is kept from spinning out of control (and from becoming mindless froth) by the sisters’ gradually revealed history and the deepening dynamics in their relationship, and their relationships with other characters, including Michaela and Peter. Until by about midway, you realise you may have been wrongfooted all along.
