Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Two Summers’ On Netflix, Where People At A Reunion Have To Contend With A Sexual Assault That Happened 30 Years Ago

If it feels like you’ve seen a show like Two Summers recently, you aren’t imagining it; two weeks ago, Apple debuted a series called Now and Then that had a very similar plot. It’s where a group of friends gather right as someone threatens to reveal the secret they’ve kept among themselves for decades. Some of the details change, but we’ve seen plots like this so much in the last few years, this has almost become its own genre. Where does Two Summers fall in this group of shows?

TWO SUMMERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Silicon Valley, USA.” In a massive house, a middle-aged man walks into his bathroom, sits on the toilet and sees texts that contain a video he thought no longer existed.

The Gist: The video that Peter Van Gael (Tom Vermeir) is watching is from 1992, where his younger self (Lukas Bulteel) and his friend Mark (Felix Meyer) are taking advantage of their friend Sophie Geboers (Louise Bergez) while she’s passed out. If he doesn’t pay a certain amount in Bitcoin, the video will be released soon after the reunion he and his wife Romée (An Miller) are hosting on a private island off the cost of France.

Both were members of a group of friends who spent summers at an estate in Zandhoven, Belgium, in the early ’90s. The rest of the group meet in Antwerp to get over to the island: Sophie (Inge Paulussen) is together with Didier Verpoorten (Herwig Ilegems), who likes to brag about his flight attendant job. Luk Van Gael (Kevin Janssens) has brought his younger girlfriend Lia (Sanne-Samina Hanssen) along. He shares custody of an adult special-needs son with his ex-wife Saskia Van Dessel (Ruth Becquart), who was also in the group. Finally, Stef Van Gompel (Koen De Bouw), a government minister who was derisively given the nickname “Mowgli” by the group due to his scruffy wardrobe when he was younger, arrives.

The first one Peter informs about the video is Mowgli, since his younger self (Vincent Van Sande) was behind the camera making that video; both wonder who had it, considering they destroyed the tape back then. The two of them determine that someone on the island is the blackmailer, and they’re determined to figure out who it is. It also turns out that the younger Didier (Bjarne Devolder) was also there, something he’s never revealed to Sophie.

We also find out in the 1992 flashbacks was that Luk (Tijmen Govaerts) was recovering from cancer or some other serious illness. Mark, who got in a fight with Peter after the incident — Peter called him a freeloader, essentially — also seemingly perished when the house caught fire the night after the video was made. At the very least, that’s what the group thinks, as we see Peter and others trying to get to Mark’s room, only to be blocked by the flames.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Cribbing from a recent review we wrote, we’ll just say that Two Summers has a similar plot to Now And Then, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Yellowjackets, Who Killed Sara? and other shows where a group of people have a murderous secret that might be revealed. (Yes, this kind of plot has been a recurring thing for the last couple of years.)

Our Take: What we’ve found with shows that cover two timelines in order to show what secret the current-day group might not want to have revealed is that one of the timelines gets short shrift. The characters are generally more well-defined in one timeline over the other, and the overall show suffers.

In Two Summers, it seems like the 1992 timeline is the one that has the more one-dimensional characters, at least at first. We don’t get a super-solid handle on just who young Saskia (Tine Roggeman) and Romée (Marieke Anthoni) are, for instance, and the two of them seem to be interchangeable in that first episode. Actually, if Sophie wasn’t the victim, she would be equally indistinguishable from the other two female friends.

Considering the show is about a sexual assault some members of the group perpetrated on one of the others, writers Paul Baeten Gronda and Tom Lenaerts should have spread the characterizations around more. But it certainly looks like we get more personal insight into the younger version of the men than of the women.

We should give the writers credit, though: By the end of the first episode, we’re able to link the younger and older versions of each character, though we’re scratching our heads about just what age range they were in during the 1992 timeline. Why do we think that? It’s because the actors playing the older versions seem to range from their early 40s to their early 60s, yet the younger versions all look to be either college students or recent college grads. There’s not enough plausible aging people up or down to cover such a large gap, and it breaks some of the credibility when we link the younger and older versions of each character.

What we would also like to see going forward is Sophie’s perspective, especially when she’s older. Does she remember the attack? If so, how much? And does she know that Didier was in the room as it happened? That perspective will also round out the story a bit, so it’s not just a bunch of d-bag guys trying to keep their heinous act a secret.

Sex and Skin: Young Sophie’s top is open while Mark and Peter take turns on her as she’s passed out.

Parting Shot: Two months after the reunion, Salima Mitonga (Jennifer Heylen), an examining magistrate, gets a file that contains a picture of the group; we’re not sure what Salima is investigating, but it can’t be good.

Sleeper Star: We liked how Koen De Bouw is able to switch Mowgli from a powerful-looking character right back to the less-than-confident one he was within the confines of this group. That’s always the way, isn’t it? No matter how far you’ve come as a person, when you’re in a group of old friends you tend to act the same way you did back in the day.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Peter describes who owns the island estate where they’ve gathered, Didier jokingly asks “Is he the CEO of Google or what?” Romée answers, “He’s the legal director. The CEO has his own island, and he won’t rent it out.” She might as well have shoved a fistful of 100 euro notes in Didier’s face with that statement.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the flaws, Two Summers is one of the more solid entries in this genre, mainly because it’s clear with its storytelling and has some well-defined characters among its massive ensemble.

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.