Untamed

Untamed opens with one hell of a hook. Two climbers scaling Yosemite's El Capitan suddenly find a dead body dangling from their ropes mid-pitch. It's shocking, cinematic, and for about six minutes you're leaning forward thinking: alright, this could be something.

Then the actual show starts – and drops you right into a stock Netflix procedural.

The series follows a federal agent investigating a death in Yosemite, where missing hikers and buried secrets pile up into a larger mystery. The premise has potential, but it plays out like a murder mystery assembled almost entirely out of leftover television parts.

Within the first twenty minutes, the show starts panic-dumping exposition and dramatic stakes in your face like it's afraid you've already opened your phone — murder, trauma, jurisdiction friction, ex-wife, buried secrets — we got ADHD just typing that sentence.

Eric Bana plays a rugged investigator carrying the baggage of losing a young son. Naturally, he's paired with a newcomer from the big city. Naturally, bureaucrats want the case buried. Less naturally, his ex-wife keeps reminding him they have a past.

Parts of Untamed do work. Yosemite looks incredible. The opening sequence rips. Bana's doing what he can. But the show wants you to care so badly that it never stops overplaying its hand long enough for any suspense to breathe. It insists on telling you exactly what to feel and when you should feel it.

By the end, Untamed joins the ever-growing pile of Netflix crime shows that are perfectly engineered to autoplay while you're folding laundry.