Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 14, 2026
I have no idea why people keep comparing Netflix’s Below to the far superior Apple TV series Widow’s Bay. It’s awfully unfair. The comparison does Below no favors — it’s hard to beat the best series of 2026 — but it also falls apart on the merits, because the two shows share little beyond their small seaside towns. Widow’s Bay grapples with a curse that mutates across a whole menu of horror subgenres, while Below mostly sticks to the creature feature. And while Below isn’t bleak, it isn’t intentionally funny, either. The remote Newfoundland town at its center has a communal warmth and a slight quirk, but it lacks the eccentrics and oddballs that populate Widow’s Bay.
The strangest thing about Below, at least to me, is that Josh Hartnett is old enough to have three adult children. Like, children with beards and jobs. It makes logical sense — Hartnett is 48, and in a small Newfoundland village, a 30-year-old kid wouldn’t raise any eyebrows — but it doesn’t make emotional sense. He was the young guy in Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down, the hotshot rookie opposite Harrison Ford in Hollywood Homicide. How can he have children older than he was in those movies?
Time is an a-hole.
Anyway, Below entertains in a B-movie kind of way. It’s a creature feature that is blessedly only six episodes long, so even if it might have worked better as a movie, it never overstays its welcome. Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a fisherman and iceberg harvester in Snook’s Arm, Newfoundland. I love that iceberg harvesting is still a thing (and it is still a thing in Newfoundland): Harvesters haul in chunks that have calved off icebergs and sell them to, say, vodka distillers, because the ice predates the Industrial Revolution and therefore carries no manmade impurities.
In Below, however, they pull up chunks that do harbor mysterious impurities, and some of the folks who mix drinks with that ice develop afflictions that feel vaguely supernatural: insatiable thirst, hallucinations, and an overwhelming urge to hurl themselves into the sea.
The sea is not a great place to hurl oneself, however, because a giant squid prowls those waters, and it is very aggressive. Like, devour-a-moose, capsize-a-boat aggressive. Meanwhile, a wealthy family — the Crockers — is snapping up every parcel of land in Snook’s Arm for reasons that don’t immediately add up.
Amid this stew of giant squid, mysterious illness, and moneyed menace, Calvin Penney is struggling to keep his business afloat and his family intact, which proves difficult because his kids keep drifting into the orbit of the town’s biggest problems. There’s also a scientist, played by Mackenzie Davis, who is trying to get to the bottom of both the illness and the squid. She doubles as a bit of a love interest for Calvin, which feels weird, because he has three adult children and Mackenzie Davis just played, like, a 25-year-old in Halt and Catch Fire a few years ago, and by that, I mean 12 years ago, and by that, I mean: What is time?
Below probably won’t linger in anyone’s memory beyond October, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining, a little fun, mildly heartfelt, and a good time. It also says something about Below that most of the characters are likable, and yet we still find ourselves rooting for the giant squid. Leave the squid be! It’s not hurting anyone, except anyone who comes near it!
As for the show: Sit back, relax, and let it wash over you. Time will pass, you’ll blink, and before you know it, Josh Hartnett will be playing grandfathers, because time is also cruel. Fortunately for Hartnett, it hasn’t been cruel to him — even as a blue-collar ice harvester, the man barely looks 35. Also, what a freaking cool job: hauling hunks of iceberg out of the North Atlantic and selling them to specialty vodka makers. No wonder his character is trying to so hard to hang on to it.
