There is a special kind of chill that only a coastal story can conjure. Not just weather, but mood. Fog that makes every porch light look lonely. Netflix’s Below leans into that unease, setting its six-episode miniseries in a misty Newfoundland fishing village where the iceberg-filled waters have become home to something mysterious.
Now streaming, the series keeps its premise clean: Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton play a father and son trying to live their lives as the village is increasingly terrorized by what is out there in the icy sea.
Father and son
Hartnett and Heaton star as Calvin and Wade Penney, a pairing that brings some familiar brooding energy but with the volume turned up on the feelings. As Calvin and Wade, they get into animated family arguments and gleefully celebrate when things (occasionally) go their way.
“It’s all on the page,” Hartnett said. “All I had to do was show up and feel those things toward Charlie.”
Why they joined
Hartnett, 48, said he came to the project after producer Jessica Rhoades, who produced Black Mirror, sent him the Below script probably about two months before production was supposed to start. He loved it, but had questions. After speaking with creator Jesse McKeown and a couple of the other executive producers, Hartnett said it sounded “really fresh and nuanced and organic.”
Heaton, 32, said the appeal was the blend of “warmth and mystery.” Coming off Stranger Things, he recalled some concern about whether it might feel too similar. But Wade, as Heaton describes him, is grounded in working-class life. Heaton, who is from a working-class fishing town in Bridlington, England, connected with that immediately. “Everyone knows somebody like Wade,” he said.
Hartnett also remembered how quickly Heaton seemed to click into place on set. Willow Kean, who plays Calvin’s sister and Wade’s aunt, saw Heaton arrive in costume, smoking a cigarette, and thought, “I think somebody’s on set who shouldn’t be” because he looked like a local.
Newfoundland locations
Below was filmed on location in Newfoundland, Canada, and the cast has described the setting with the kind of detail that comes from living inside it for long days. Heaton called it “powerful and beautiful.” Where they shot, Snook’s Arm, was a bay called Brigus South.
Hartnett said he knew very little about Newfoundland going in, though he did know the “Come From Away” story about the people stranded in Gander after 9/11, that it was where Leif Erikson landed a long time ago, that it is the closest place in North America to Europe and that transatlantic flights used to stop there, and that there are puffins. Heaton said, “I hadn’t even ever heard of it,” but added that he learned a lot while there and noted how proud Newfoundlanders are of their history and culture.
For Hartnett, one early day included a whale-watching tour he expected to be “touristy but fun,” but it became something else. He called it “a spiritual experience,” describing humpback whales right beneath tiny boats and the feeling of being “small and insignificant next to another animal.”
The accent
Hartnett and Heaton had not crossed paths before Below. They met on Zoom, then spent time with the full cast working on the Newfoundland accent.
“We wanted the family to all sound like they were from the same place,” Heaton said. “But the accent is so hard to hear in the beginning. So, we were all getting it wrong together.”
Heaton said it took time to understand the accent’s internal logic, and he leaned on voice coach Alison Kelly, along with extras who were also local artists. Hartnett said the hardest part was hearing the rhythm. To train his ear, he listened to “The Broadcast,” formerly “The Fisheries Broadcast,” a radio show that has been on since 1951.
Chemistry
They play father and son, even though they are not that far apart in age. Hartnett put a number on it: “Fifteen-and-a-half years! I did the math.”
Hartnett said Heaton arrived so fully in character that it was easy to feel protectiveness and love. Heaton described Hartnett as a leader on set, and said seeing him with his family helped him connect the dots for Wade. “It’s cool that I get to be your son,” Heaton told him.
Careers in motion
Below also lands at a busy stretch for both leads. Hartnett has been cultivating a career renaissance with roles in Black Mirror, Oppenheimer, Trap, and this month’s Verity. Heaton has been diversifying post-Stranger Things, including playing an ill-fated financial journalist in Season 4 of Industry, and he is set to star next in a Peaky Blinders sequel series.
“I like trying to surprise people, and maybe surprise myself too,” Heaton said.
Hartnett also reflected on the pressures of early fame and celebrity culture. “That stuff wasn’t for me,” he said, recalling how quickly everything changed after Pearl Harbor and how he returned to Minnesota for about two years because, as he put it, “There’s no paparazzi in Minnesota.” He added: “In our business, it’s about surviving your 20s to get to the place where you have the respect of the people on set that you’re working with, and they allow you the leeway to create characters the way that you want to create them.”
What it delivers
If you are drawn to coastal mysteries, Below brings you straight into a Newfoundland fishing village and holds tight to its central threat: something mysterious in the iceberg-filled waters.
What makes it click, though, is how much time it spends on the people living beside that water. Hartnett and Heaton make the Penneys feel like a family through small, recognizable behavior, the bickering that comes from closeness, the flashes of pride, the way love and fear can show up in the same sentence.
