Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Safe Harbour’ On Hulu, A Mystery Surrounding A Refugee Tragedy

While we were watching Safe Harbour, we started wondering why Australian television has only started making it to U.S. networks since streaming services started to grab for any and all content. It’s usually pretty high quality stuff. This psychological thriller is no exception. Is it worth your time?

SAFE HARBOUR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of a sailboat, looking tiny against the water and horizon. A graphic says “Timor Sea 2013”.

The Gist: A group of five friends are on a fishing trip in Indonesian waters. In the distance, they see a ship that’s dead in the water. Two of the people on the sailboat, Ryan Gallagher (Ewen Leslie) and Damien Pascoe (Joel Jackson) take a dinghy over to the vessel. It’s teeming with refugees from Indonesia, who want asylum in Australia. The person who speaks to the two Aussies is Ismail Al-Bayati (Hazem Shammas), who is being pressured by the people on the ship to ask the Aussies if the refugees can board their vessel.

Before we see that, we flash forward to 2018, back to Brisbane, where Ryan runs a successful boating company. Ryan grabs a cab, not realizing that the driver is Ismail, and it may have not been a coincidence. When he gets back, he tells his brother Bilal (Robert Rabiah) that “I found one.”

Back to the Timor Sea five years ago, the people on the sailboat, not able to radio for help, decide whether to tow the refugees or leave them stranded to go get help. They vote, 4 to 1 to tow them. But, as we find out in 2018, things did not go well.

Ryan sees Ismail again and invites him to a BBQ at his place. Ismail’s wife Zahra (Nicole Chamoun) wants nothing to do with them, due to “what they did to us.” Ismail and Bilal want to face them and have them answer for their misdeeds. What we find out when the Al-Bayati family gets together with the people on the sailing trip — Ryan, his wife Bree (Leeanna Walsman), Damien’s ex (and Ryan’s sister) Olivia (Phoebe Tonkin) and Helen Korczak (Jacqueline McKenzie), a friend who the group hasn’t seen in years — is a shock. But none of the group knows exactly what happened the night everything went wrong… and Damien left Australia shortly after the incident.

Our Take: Safe Harbour is a mostly pretty good Australian miniseries, created by group of Aussie TV veterans. Their experience shows in how they build the tension in the first of the four episodes; the back and forth between 2013 is an effective way to tease out what actually happened compared to the two takes on each side of the incident.

One of the things we also noticed about the show is that it’s one of the few we’ve seen where the Muslim characters are seen with dignity and emotion and not just as terrorists looking to blow up or shoot Westerners. In fact, the white privilege shown in the first episode was often hard to watch, with the obviously wealthy people on the sailing trip barely remembering the refugees they left behind in Indonesian waters. For instance, when Ryan tells Bree that he found Ismail, she simply tells him, “Who?” Ouch.

But by the time we get to the end of the first episode, we’re not a hundred percent sure what happened. Helen, who was on watch the night of the incident, got her drink on and fell asleep. The dinghy and life vests went missing. Anyone could have done the deed that night. But one thing we do know: the incident affected the white friends’ lives more than the first few minutes of the first episode lets on, and it does a nice job of subtly foreshadowing some of those issues.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: The morning after the incident, the sailing group wake up to find the refugee ship gone. There’s a strong implication that the ship sank after it was cut loose.

Sleeper Star: Nicole Chamoun does a fine job portraying the conflicting emotions tearing at Zahra, especially in light of the fact that she’s pregnant. She is also the voice of reason, begging Ismail not to stalk the group from the sailboat.

Most Pilot-y Line: Annoying teens seem to be unnecessarily complicating the story. Maddie Gallagher (Ella Jaz Macrokanis) seems to be interested in finding out more about Ismail and Zahra’s son Asad (Yazeed Daher), and while Asad rebuffs her at first, a scene where he spies her swimming in her pool makes us think he’s interested.

Our Call: Stream It. Safe Harbour is an intense psychological thriller that treats Muslims with the respect they deserve. It’s a rarity on TV, and it’s worth the four-hour investment.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Safe Harbour on Hulu