Bloodline (season 2)

It is quite fitting that Bloodline, a show about the influential Rayburn family being torn apart by its ostracised eldest son, also happens to be the black sheep of the Netflix original series. It might be rooted more in soap opera territory, but it’s not as bingeworthy as its more high profile counterparts like House of Cards or Orange is the New Black, nor does it boast their whip-smart writing and satirical streak.

Yet season 1 proved to be a slow burner – a family noir that crept under your skin, set against the lush backdrop of the Florida Keys. Giving said creeps in a mesmerising performance was Ben Mendelsohn as Danny Rayburn, the afore-mentioned runt, whose misdeeds and machinations led to the twisted finale that was heavily foreshadowed throughout the thirteen episode run.

However, the disposal of the series’ most vital player at the end of the first season means the second has a big void to fill. The show’s creators appear all too aware of this. In fact, the biggest criticism that can be levelled at Bloodline’s second run is that it still relies a little too heavily on Mendelsohn in the form of tenuous flashbacks. This is unfair on the rest of the cast, especially when there are enough talented actors playing characters that easily rival Danny in the screw-up stakes.

If “we’re not bad people, but we did a bad thing” was the first season’s tagline, then season 2 goes to substantial lengths to prove that the Rayburns are in fact very bad people. Sissy Spacek’s matriarch feebly tries to make up for past failures by bringing in more estranged family members (or are they?), Norbert Leo Butz’s aimless, coked-up Kevin is the last person who should be having kids right now, while Linda Cardellini’s Megan uses her legal acumen to ruthlessly take down external threats to the Rayburn well-being.

Top of the bunch is Kyle Chandler as John Rayburn, the erstwhile moral compass of the show, now hopelessly spinning out of control. Chandler makes John’s transition from straight-laced citizen to accidental criminal wholly believable and the season’s best scenes are the ones where he is visibly struggling to hold it all together.

The final episode’s rather abrupt ending hints at difficulties in the screenwriters’ room, but the renewal for a third season means there are hopes that all loose ends will be convincingly tied up. Black sheep? Scrappy underdog, more like.

3/5