Warning: Contains spoilers for season one of Bloodline
The family crime drama Bloodline, tipped as the best original Netflix series when it debuted last year, has returned for a second season – and critics say it's even better and darker.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The series focuses on the lives of the Rayburn family, which owns and runs an elegant seafront hotel in the Florida Keys. When the eldest son and black sheep of the family, Danny, returns home for an anniversary celebration of the business, he stirs up secrets from the past, which threaten to undermine the family legacy. In the final episode he reaches an untimely end.
All ten episodes of the second season have just been made available on Netflix.
Deadline Hollywood's Dominic Patten, who tipped Bloodline as one of his top ten shows of 2015, says that if you liked season one of the drama the "much more kinetic" season two "reveals last year was just a warm-up act for the riveting rot and revelations that take hold of the Rayburn family and those around them".
The "binge-worthy" season gets "darker and darker", says Patten. There are intense performances from family members, but the real blood and guts is watching Chandler going further and further out to sea as his cop character flails from the fallout of the "near-peerless" Danny's murder and his haunting effect on the family.
Patten concludes that "the drama and the bone-crushing suspense are just so tremendously Florida noir you have to jump into these waters".
The first season of Bloodline was like your favourite Eighties soap operas in a blender with "essence of airport thriller", and served with "a sprig of Southern Gothic", says Ed Power in the Daily Telegraph. But he adds that the "frothy family melodrama" won him over with "sheer, eye-swivelling pugnacity".
The second season, he says, has calmed down and shed much of the "feverish overkill", but as a guilty pleasure this romp "continues to go down easily". He adds: "Just don't expect anything beyond surface level chills and thrills."
The knotty family saga is back, says Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair. And while it might be a little thinner than before, the "swampy slow burn" is "still plenty compelling".
The challenge for this season, says Lawson, was what to do without Danny. Wisely, he says, the writers have embraced this and plunged things into the darkness, with Florida's natural beauty "teeming with menace" as this proud, self-destructive family "scrambles to keep their heads above water".
-
Could Trump run for a third term?The Explainer Constitutional amendment limits US presidents to two terms, but Trump diehards claim there is a loophole
-
Political cartoons for November 28Cartoons Friday's political cartoons include economic diagnosis, climate distractions, and more
-
What does the fall in net migration mean for the UK?Today’s Big Question With Labour and the Tories trying to ‘claim credit’ for lower figures, the ‘underlying picture is far less clear-cut’
-
The 8 best sci-fi series of all timethe week recommends Imagining — and fearing — the future continues to give us compelling and thoughtful television
-
The 8 best action movies of the 21st centurythe week recommends Thrills come in many forms, from assassins and spies to regular people fighting for justice
-
The 5 best narco movies of all timethe week recommends Cartels from hell and the greasy underside of the international drug trade
-
The Beast in Me: a ‘gleefully horrible story’The Week Recommends Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in a ‘gleefully horrible story’
-
The 8 greatest heist movies of all timethe week recommends True stories, social commentary and pure escapism highlight these great robbery movies
-
Gen Z in Los Angeles, the end of ‘Stranger Things’ and a new mystery from the creator of ‘Breaking Bad’ in November TVthe week recommends This month's new television releases include ‘I Love L.A.,’ ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Pluribus’
-
The 5 best political thriller series of the 21st centuryThe Week Recommends Viewers can binge on most anything, including espionage and the formation of parliamentary coalitions
-
The 5 best TV shows about the mobThe Week Recommends From the show that launched TV’s golden age to a Batman spin-off, viewers can’t get enough of these magnificent mobsters
