Stream It Or Skip It?

In general, streaming thrillers promise the viewer lots of twists and turns as it solves whatever mystery is at the center of the series. But a new French thriller feels like it has a pretty straightforward mystery at its center. But the performances at the show’s center give viewers a reason to watch.

Opening Shot: We hear a woman whispering. Then the woman and her son go outside in the dead of night, pack their car, and drive off.

The Gist: Alba Mazier (Ava Baya) is a young single mother who has decided to take her son Leo (Max Harter) and drive away from a violent and untenable situation; they were living with Leo’s grandfather at the time. The goal is to set up a new life in Barcelona. On the road, Alba gets an email on her phone from Arnaud Lasserre (Thibault De Montalembert), inviting her to interview as a seasonal worker at his massive flower farm. Needing some cash, Alba and Leo take a detour.

When Arnaud sees Alba’s resume, he has no recollection of setting the interview up. But Alba appeals to him that she needs the gig, so she’s hired and immediately sent out to the field to pick flowers. But there seems to be something more to this than just a seasonal job, and Arnaud confronts Alba about it, ultimately telling her to meet him early the next morning.

Alba goes to the meeting point, and eventually finds Arnaud sprawled out in a toolshed, bleeding out from a stab wound. She runs, and his son Mathieu (Guillaume Gouix) eventually finds him. When the police are called, they get a report from a worker that they saw Alba running from the vicinity, which immediately makes her a suspect. Arnaud quickly succumbs to his wounds.

As police detectives probe, Arnaud’s wife Beatrice (Isabelle Adjani) lies and tells them that nothing of consequence happened the day before. To the contrary: Arnaud, Beatrice, Mathieu and Mathieu’s sister Lucie (Louise Coldefy) were about to sign a deal to sell the money-hemorrhaging farm to a fragrance conglomerate. The conglomerate will have exclusive access to the farm’s signature roses, and the Lasserres would still be able to run it. But Arnaud ends up balking at the last possible second.

Alba is eventually caught and questioned by police. She finds out, as does the Lasserres, that Arnaud put Alba in his will six months prior, citing her as his biological daughter. This would entitle her to a quarter of the estate, but if she’s convicted of murdering Arnaud, she gets nothing under French law. Obviously, Alba has been framed, and she gets help from an unlikely source to help her prove it: Manon Simoni (Claire Romain), Arnaud’s granddaughter, who volunteers to be Alba’s attorney.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Under A Dark Sun is a thriller-mystery that feels like it could have been written by Harlan Coben (it’s not), as it feels like shows like The Stranger, Fool Me Once, Missing You, Stay Close, etc. It also has elements of Succession.

Our Take: There’s really nothing complicated about the mystery part of the thriller-mystery combo in Under A Dark Sun. Someone knew about the change to Arnaud’s will, set it up so that Alba arrives at the farm, kills Arnaud and tries to pin it on Alba. The thought is that someone in his family, namely Beatrice, Mathieu or Lucie, was the one who did it, because they stood to lose a quarter of their inheritance to Alba, whom they never met.

It would be more interesting, of course, if someone completely unexpected did it, as long as that twist doesn’t come completely out of left field. But there really aren’t any other characters introduced in the first episode that would even come close to entering the picture as a possible suspect.

This is where the thriller aspect kicks in. Can Alba find who set her up before that person finds out she’s on his or her trail? That part is going to be more compelling than the actual mystery. We also don’t fully know the circumstances of her running away with her son to begin with. What kind of situation is she leaving, and will she hang in there just to see if she can get a quarter of the estate of the father she never knew she had?

There’s a lot to like about Under A Dark Sun, like Baya’s intensity as Alba and Adjani’s insouciant performance as Beatrice, who seems so unfazed by Arnaud’s death that she wears a pink suit to his funeral and reads a eulogy she created with ChatGPT. That back and forth between these two very opposite characters should drive the tension in this series.

Sex and Skin: Mathieu drowns his sorrows in booze and sex in one scene. The next morning, his nephew wakes him up for the funeral; he’s lying next to a strange woman and he’s completely naked.

Parting Shot: We’ll just say that Alba finds herself in a very tight spot at the end of this episode.

Sleeper Star: Max Harter plays Leo, Alba’s son. He basically has to hide and question everything that’s going on through the entire series, while trusting that his mother will protect him.

Most Pilot-y Line: The police detectives in this show seem to be especially ineffective. One has basically created the whole narrative over why Alba did it, despite the only evidence being the fact that someone saw her running from the area. Then, another detective leads cops through a search of the bungalow where Alba and Leo were staying and completely miss Leo hiding in the crawlspace underneath.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Under A Dark Sun has just enough thrills, despite a pedestrian mystery, and fun-to-watch performances by Baya and Adjani, that the show is worth a viewer’s time.

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.