TV Talk: Showtime thriller ‘Yellowjackets’ merits buzz

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

“Alive” meets “Lost” in “Yellowjackets” (10 p.m. Sunday, Showtime), an engrossing, character-driven thriller about a 1996 New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team whose chartered plane crashes in the wilderness leading to “Lord of the Flies” -esque mayhem crosscut with present-day scenes of the survivors reuniting to take on a blackmailer.

Created and executive produced by writers Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson (“Dispatches from Elsewhere,” “The Originals”), the premiere episode does a great job wrangling a huge cast and making clear to viewers which girl matches with which woman as different actors play the same character in the two time periods.

While I’ve generally grown weary of series with a mystery at the center that may never be resolved, the two-time-period structure and emphasis on characters over a mysterious plot (though it does have that, too) allows “Yellowjackets” to go down easier. Viewers know which girls survived from 1996 because we see them in 2021, so it’s not so much a question of what will happen in the 1996 timeline as how did it happen. That’s more satisfying from the jump. (The premiere “Yellowjackets” episode is available for free sampling on YouTube through Jan. 15.)

The show’s title takes its name from the soccer team but it might also refer to the characters’ ability to “sting” (re: harm) one another physically and emotionally.

The 1996 story, backed by a terrific soundtrack of pop tunes from the era (turns out the show is also a nostalgia play), introduces the younger versions of leader Jackie (Ella Purnell), more-complicated-than-she-seems Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), budding lesbian Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), goth girl Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and weird Misty (Samantha Hanratty).

It’s clear from the opening moments that in the future these girls take a primal turn, but then the show flashes back to before the crash and through the first six (of 10) season-one episodes it’s a slow, foreboding build-up from the time the plane goes down at the end of the premiere.

Seeing the characters in 1996 helps inform the scenes featuring their 2021 selves. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is unhappily married to Jeff (Warren Kole, who got his start in the industry working as Simon Baker’s photo double when CBS’s “The Guardian” filmed scenes in Western Pennsylvania, where Kole’s grandparents lived). Natalie (Juliette Lewis) is in rehab again. Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is running for elected office but her past continues to haunt her present, particularly as a supernatural vibe creeps into the show with regards to her son.

Shauna, Natalie, Taissa and Misty (Christina Ricci) come together in the present-day storyline after someone anonymously sends them postcards with a symbol that has a tie to their wilderness experience. The sender tries to blackmail them, threatening to reveal whatever secrets they’re holding from those 19 months before they were rescued.

Other than some skinned animals, “Yellowjackets” generally favors the spooky over the gory with the greatest emphasis on character and relationships.

It’s difficult for shows to get buzz in a 500-series TV/streaming universe but “Yellow­jackets” merits attention.