Stream It Or Skip It?

In the early morning hours of January 14, 1993, the MS Jan Heweliusz, a Polish passenger ferry, tipped over on its port side and capsized while navigating a violent winter storm. It was crossing the Baltic Sea from its home port in Świnoujście, Poland to a destination in Sweden. A new dramatic series examines the possible causes of the disaster and what the victims’ families did in the aftermath.

HEWELIUSZ: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear an SOS signal in Morse code, then we see bodies floating in the dark water as lights flash.

The Gist: Piotr Binter (Michał Żurawski), the off-duty captain of the Jan Heweliusz, is called in to the harbor master’s office; when he’s informed of the disaster, he’s asked how he would have handled being hit with the severe weather the ferry’s on-duty captain, Ułasiewicz (Borys Szyc), ran into. Piotr definitely wouldn’t try to do what Ułasiewicz did, and everyone investigating wonder why the ferry was where it was. In fact, because it’s in German waters, they have to rely on German rescue boats and helicopters to try to save people.

Out in the middle of the Baltic, as the ferry sinks, some rafts are on the water, waiting to be spotted while constantly under threat of being overwhelmed by the roiling surf. Adding to all of this is the fact that it’s January, giving people in the water not a lot of time before hypothermia sets in.

On one raft is a group of crewmembers in thermal floating suits, except for one person, who is in his regular uniform and soaking wet. They manage to get spotted by helicopters, as well as pull at least one other crewmember in. The rescue helicopter just can’t maintain the cable to lift people in due to the wind. A German rescue ship also sees the raft, but can only rescue two crewmembers, though it seems that only one of them, Witold, ends up surviving the ordeal.

Piotr goes out with the Deputy Minister on the recovery operation, because he can identify the bodies of the crewmembers that have been recovered. He’s shocked to see that some of the men are missing limbs, likely a product of their bodies floating too close to the ferry’s propellers.

In the meantime, Jolanta Ułasiewicz (Magdalena Różczka), the wife of the on-duty captain, goes to a friend’s apartment and sees the disaster on TV. They take her teenage daughter out of school, and the teen tries to tell her mother that Ułasiewicz is still alive, but Jolanta knows the truth.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Heweliusz has a similar feel to Chernobyl, another drama about a real-life disaster and its aftermath.

Our Take: While Heweliusz is a fictionalized account of the sinking of the MS Jan Heweliusz, it doesn’t try to sugarcoat what happened to the ferry. It capsized in a violent winter storm, killing 55 of its 64 passengers and crew. What the series is going to do, though is examine the disaster through the court cases that happened in its wake, which feels a whole lot less grim than what we witnessed in the disaster-centric first episode.

And, yes, the first episode is grim. It shows floating bodies and futile rescues. There are many scenes of violent surf hindering rescue efforts. Piotr starts to try to figure out what Ułasiewicz was doing to get the ferry into such deep trouble, but for the most part, what is the biggest concern is first the rescue, then the recovery of bodies.

But further episodes will show how families of the passengers and crew look to get their day in court, and how the port officials make Ułasiewicz the scapegoat. This is where Jolanta comes into play, as she’s going to want to defend her husband’s reputation as the company that owns the ferry and her husband is investigated. That’s where we hope the show becomes a bit less grim, as the families of the victims get at least a little bit of closure.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As a number of bodies are laid out for family members to identify, a woman carrying a baby tries to make her way through the wailing relatives to see if her husband is among the bodies.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the visual effects team who recreated the roiling Baltic during the rescue scenes. Did they use a tank on a soundstage? Either way, it looked scary as hell.

Most Pilot-y Line: The doctor asks Witold how he’s doing. “I’ve been better,” he says in a massive understatement.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As the disaster gives way to the aftermath, we hope that Heweliusz becomes more about closure than about death. That’s about as much as we can ask for, given the real-life tragedy that the show is about.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.