‘Animal Kingdom’: The YA Cross Between ‘Sons of Anarchy’ and ‘Point Break’
A tough little drama about a group of surly pretty-boys who commit crimes at the command of their hard-as-manicured-nails mother, Animal Kingdom, premiering Tuesday on TNT, is a showcase for two familiar faces: Ellen Barkin as the crime boss, and Scott Speedman (Felicity) as one of the guys she orders around.
Except that’s not how the show is really centered. Based on the admired 2010 Australian film of the same name, the American version, developed by producer-writer Jonathan Lisco (Southland; Halt and Catch Fire), tilts the tale to J — short for Joshua — a sad young teen played by Finn Cole. In the opening moments, we get a quick sketch of J’s background: He lived with drug-addict parents, his mom OD’d, so he goes to live with his grandmother, Smurf Cody, played by Barkin as the slinkiest yet most hard-bitten grandmother you’ve ever seen. This Animal Kingdom seems, early on, a YA version of Sons of Anarchy, with Barkin’s character the equivalent of Katey Sagal’s Gemma.
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The brothers — Craig (Ben Robson), Deran (Jake Weary), and especially Pope, played by Shawn Hatosy from that excellent TNT series Southland — are muscled, tattooed, ratty-haired. Slightly more dashing is Speedman’s Baz, who is not related to Smurf (bloodlines are awfully murky on this show), though she treats him like a son. It’s Baz, clearly possessed of a few more brain cells than the other guys, that Smurf turns to most often to execute their plans for heists and smash-and-grab robberies.
The show is set in Southern California, on the beach, and when the Cody brothers go surfing, Animal Kingdom picks up a bit of Point Break’s vibe. More time, however, is spent at Smurf’s house, pool-side, where the boys and various girls drink, do drugs, have sex, and eat grilled steaks, all under the watchful — and lustful — eye of Smurf. Barkin, whose eyes are naturally set to sly slits, is effortlessly good as a sensual maternal figure with an iron will. She can turn a viewer on and creep a viewer out simultaneously. When Smurf offers to wash J’s clothes, including the ones he has on, she tells him to strip while she stands there, and there’s a shot of her lowering her gaze to his waist level that’s designed to make you think, what the hell is going on here?
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“There are no secrets in this family,” Smurf says, which of course means the house is fairly quivering with secrets. The first two back-to-back episodes airing Tuesday night were directed by John Wells (ER; West Wing; Southland), and they’re tight and occasionally suspenseful. The problem with Animal Kingdom is that we’ve seen so many dark, gritty family noirs on basic and premium cable, much of the air of menace that hovers over the new show seems like musty air rechanneled from other sources.
It also doesn’t help to center the show around J — the character is a blank-faced kid whose reactions are minimally interesting. (It also seems unbelievable that he’d stay around this criminal clan after various knock-downs, beat-ups, and near-drownings he endures in rapid succession.) The tiresome excuse that networks want to attract a younger demo by putting younger faces in prominent positions in a TV show is a petty crime committed in the case of Animal Kingdom, when it’s Barkin and Speedman whose faces we really want to see more of.
Animal Kingdom airs Tuesday night at 9 p.m. on TNT.
