The Waterfront Review: It’s a Girl’s World Here

The Waterfront Review: It's a Girl's World Here | Leisurebyte

Director: Marcos Siega, Liz Friedlander, Erica Dunton, Jann Turner

Date Created: 2025-06-19 12:30

Editor's Rating:
3

The Waterfront Review: Inspired by true events, this Netflix mystery drama series follows the Buckley family, who desperately try to reclaim their crumbling North Carolina fishing empire. However, when things go from bad to worse, they must take up every avenue to keep themselves afloat.

The series has 8 episodes, each with a runtime of around 50 minutes.

The Waterfront Review

The 8 episodes of Netflix series The Waterfront are surprisingly bingeable and make for an entertaining time. At around 45 minutes to an hour, every episode has a ton of drama and crime woven into the runtime that sometimes feels a little silly and at others, quite juicy. There’s a ton of human stories in the mix, from Bree’s struggles with addiction to Cane’s desperation to find himself; the series has it all. Plus, it’s the story of a dysfunctional family with a lot of love to give one another, and there are no cartoonish villains in the mix… well, except for the cartoonish villain, of course.

The series follows the Buckleys, who pride themselves on the fishing empire that they have created. However, just underneath the surface, everything is falling apart, and everyone is keeping one secret or another from each other. They are desperately in debt, and patriarch Harlan refuses to do anything to help their cause. Cane has resorted to shipping drugs while Mae, Harlan’s wife, wants the land deal that she has been cooking up to go through so that they can have a cash inflow.

Right then, things start to go wrong, which forces Harlan to come back to work and handle stuff. And herein lies the issue with the Buckleys, as one thing goes wrong after another. The series does a great job of painting a very vivid picture of all the characters, so much so that you know exactly who they are from the first episode. All of these characters are broken in one way or another, making you feel empathetic to their struggles. However, they aren’t terrible people per se, and it’s easy to feel for them from time to time.

Everyone constantly fumbles and makes one bad decision after another, and sometimes you do give them grace, but you realise that things would just have been easier if Harlan had just listened to his wife. In comes the antagonist, Grady, who is a hoot and a half. He’s quite cartoonish, but Topher Grace plays him like a champ. I loved him in this role; he was quite funny. However, it’s Maria Bello who steals the show for me. She’s strong, sophisticated and kind-hearted when she has to be. It’s easy to fall for her wit and no-nonsense decision-making that doesn’t involve dealing drugs.

Other than that, I found everyone on screen to be quite great at their job. It’s nice to watch Holt McCallany in this show; we might never get Mindhunter, but this one’s not bad either. Melissa Benoist is fantastic as struggling sister Bree, while Jake Weary’s Cane goes through a metamorphosis while holding on to his softer side. I am still a bit lost on the point of adding Rafael L. Silva’s Shawn here, but it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

The series, however, has very few twists and turns. I mean, sure, something or the other is constantly happening, but it’s nothing really shocking or particularly thought-provoking. It goes exactly as you’d think it would and ends in an expected way. Thus, while I enjoyed the journey, I got nothing particularly memorable out of it.

Final Thoughts

I think The Waterfront isn’t anything special. I enjoyed the performances, the drama is juicy, but nothing is particularly new or memorable. It’s not the worst, but it doesn’t differentiate itself from the dozen shows that we have seen on Netflix in the genre in any way.

Also Read: The Waterfront Ending Explained: Are the Buckleys Able to Save Themselves in the End?