‘THE WATERFRONT’ ON NETFLIX
     
Screenwriter, director, and producer Kevin Williamson, known for the screenplay for the slasher film “Scream” and TV drama series “Dawson’s Creek” and “The Vampire Diaries,” finds his life story to be inspiration for his creation of the Netflix streaming series “The Waterfront.”
     
The coast of North Carolina, where Williamson spent his high school years, is the setting for the story of the fictional Buckley family trying to hold on to their fishing empire through dangerously illegal means.
     
The parallel to the creator of “The Waterfront” is that his family’s patriarch, similar to the head of the Buckley clan, had to keep the family fishing business afloat by using his trawler to smuggle drugs to make ends meet.
     
In the fictional town of Havenport, Harlan Buckley (Holt McCallany) is the big fish in the community, running the largest fishery and an upscale restaurant that has been owned by the prominent family for generations.
     
Understanding the pivotal character of Harlan’s desperate return to illegal activity is rooted in the story of Williamson’s own father who found himself handling a financial predicament that resulted in being arrested and serving time.
     
Whether Williamson’s father was as complex as the flawed Harlan Buckley would probably make for a good story on its own, but that’s something for the show creator to contemplate if he ever thinks of doing a documentary that would likely be even more fascinating than fiction.
     
The opening scene takes place on a dark night when a boat is hijacked by gunmen who throw two men running the vessel into the sea in order to steal the $10 million in drugs waiting for pickup.
     
Harlan’s son Cane (Jake Weary) happens to find the boat washed up on shore, while police and DEA agents are on the scene.  A bit of quick thinking has Cane scurrying over to the town clerk to backdate a transfer of the boat’s title to one of the missing crew members.
     
Meanwhile, Harlan the philanderer wakes up next to a girlfriend gripping his chest in pain as he suffers yet another heart attack.  Harlan also has a penchant for whiskey any time of the day, much to the dismay of his wife Belle (Maria Bello).
     
The matriarch of the Buckley family appears to be the glue holding the family together in spite of their reckless behavior.  While cunning in many ways, Belle can also fall prey to a shrewd developer taking advantage of her willingness to sell the family’s prime oceanfront land against Harlan’s wishes.
     
The most dysfunctional family member has to be Cane’s troubled sister Bree (Melissa Benoist), struggling with addiction that has caused her to lose custody of her teenage son Diller (Brady Hepner) that she’s not allowed to see without a court-appointed chaperone.
     
Bree’s bad decisions don’t just involve drugs and alcohol.  She becomes romantically involved with DEA Special Agent Marcus Sanchez (Gerardo Celasco), who runs with his gut instinct that something is rotten in Havenport and it points to the Buckleys.
     
While Belle runs the restaurant business, Harlan and Cane stick to the seafood empire that slips back into drug-running.  But the relationship between father and son is fraught with tension that even boils over into physical confrontations.
     
Central to the essence of the series’ drama is the turbulent relationship between a father who thinks his son is too soft and feckless and a son who feels his father, despite his tough demeanor, has lost a step in dealing with the family business.
     
As the episodes unfold, interesting characters come into the mix.  Sheriff Clyde Porter (Michael Gaston) runs the town like a personal fiefdom, though mindful of Harlan’s influence.  Topher Grace’s Grady is a shady character, and the less said about him the better lest spoilers ruin a surprising turn.
     
The eight episodes of “The Waterfront” are very tempting to binge-watch.  A bit of patience is required in the early going as the story unfolds slowly while the introduction of essential characters carefully lays the foundation for a lot of twists and turns.
     
The series is a curious blend of soap opera drama and thrilling suspense.  The drama can be compelling but also formulaic given how the Buckleys are tormented by betrayals, greed, dark secrets, and festering psychic wounds common to the genre.
     
“The Waterfront” is not unlike a soap opera like the long-running “Dallas,” where backstabbing, lust and greed create an emotional rollercoaster ride, except the oil empire drama largely avoided violence aside from J.R. Ewing being shot.
     
Indeed, the Buckley family is a dysfunctional mess as the result of simmering tensions between the parents themselves and with the offspring often untethered from responsibility and family bonds.
     
“The Waterfront” benefits from charismatic performances across the board, intriguing dialogue, a bevy of surprising twists, and proving to be far more entertaining than most of the current crop of streaming series.     

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.