TORONTO – In “Below,” an upcoming Newfoundland-set Netflix miniseries, the horrors under the sea are just the tip of the iceberg.
Jesse McKeown is the creator of the show, which falls into the North Atlantic noir sub-genre but also explores current-day issues such as communities losing their livelihoods, climate change and family displacement. It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday.
“Below” is set in Snook’s Arm, a close-knit town whose few remaining residents are debating whether to leave for good.
Newfoundland is special to McKeown. His wife is a Newfoundlander; they live there on and off, and he has felt a pull to write about it for 18 years.
“There are a number of reasons why I think I always wanted to make something there,” he said. “It was that kind of crazy contrast between how unforgiving and scary the landscape was, and just how warm and fun and inviting the people and the community were.”
Warm and inviting, like show protagonist Calvin Penney (played by Josh Hartnett) and his youngest son Wade (Charlie Heaton), running an Airbnb for mainland tourists.
McKeown compares Calvin to the iceberg: “You only see this much, but then he’s got a lot of stuff going on below the surface.” And it’s in watching Calvin that we gradually see the horror haunting the waters around Snook’s Arm.
“At its heart, ‘Below’ is about a fisherman who can’t fish because there’s no fish left, so he’s been forced to adapt,” said McKeown. “He’s had to figure out other ways of making a living on the water, and that’s when he starts to notice that there are strange things happening.”
Calvin’s life weaves across all the major themes of the show. Like the loss of fishing — first from overfishing, and then a decades-long moratorium meant to restore cod stocks. Calvin’s son Wade represents a generation that feels alienated from a true working-class identity — he tells their Airbnb guests he’s never fished in his life but considers himself a fisherman.
Ironically, melting glaciers have given Calvin a new living: selling ice to vodka makers. This substitute for fishing keeps him happy at sea yet brings him closer to the horrors below.
“Below” also explores two real-world provincial government programs: Resettlement and Come Home Year.
With resettlement – government-led in the 1950s to 1970s, and community-initiated in this century – residents receive financial support if they’re willing to relocate from isolated communities that are considered unsustainable.
The show opens with a family on a boat, towing their house behind them.
“So many families now are directly affected by resettlement,” McKeown said. “If you spend any time there, or if you grew up there, that image of the house floating on the ocean is a key image,” he said.
The screenwriter reflected on the power of the visual for him: “There’s something about that image of the house on the water and a family pulling everything, the whole world, sort of, on their backs that really spoke to me. That’s why we open the show with that image.”
The real-life Snook’s Arm was resettled in 2018, when its last 10 people took the deal. But the Snook’s Arm of “Below” has held on for six years after that, because of dwindling holdouts. They include Calvin and his sister Ruth, played by Willow Kean, a Labradorian actor, novelist and playwright.
While resettlement moved some Newfoundlanders from their communities, Come Home Year is about bringing others back to the province. The show is set during a Come Home Year, with Calvin’s daughter Mary (Ruby Stokes) and son Jay (Rohan Campbell) visiting from the mainland, and Calvin contemplating a future where he gets them to stay.
McKeown is a seasoned screenwriter, recently serving as co-showrunner on Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy,” but “Below” is his first time as showrunner on a series he created.
“This was the first thing that really felt like, OK, for better or worse, this is my show. I pitched it. It’s very personal to me. It’s not based on anything else, so love it or hate it, this is my thing.”
He says he leaned into this sense of ownership for the project. “In how I do my job day to day, it’s so much easier because it’s all coming from me. I can speak directly to the vision of the show and how I want it to go.”
Shot on location in St. John’s, the production leverages Newfoundland and Labrador’s deep bench of screen talent, on both sides of the camera. Comedian and writer Mary Walsh, of “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” fame, plays the mayor.
“There is a small but really strong film and television community there. One of the best, strongest, and punching above its weight class, artistic communities in Canada is in St. John’s,” McKeown said.
But the Toronto-born screenwriter is also thrilled to return to the city for TIFF and see his project open the festival’s Primetime lineup.
‘’It feels like a weird kind of homecoming, like a full-circle kind of thing,” McKeown said, referring to a return to the festival where he premiered his first-ever short, two decades ago.
While “Below” is an authentic Newfoundland story, McKeown believes it connects through common themes felt across Canada and abroad.
“I wanted to tap into a feeling we all have right now: that we’re sort of living on the precipice. That we’re all sort of living on the brink of something.”
For him, perhaps the true horror of “Below” is that there are “a lot of people like the Penney family who are living in very precarious situations.”
“Below” screens at TIFF on Thursday, Friday and Sept. 19, and streams globally on Netflix Oct. 8.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2026.
