Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Thai Cave Rescue’ On Netflix, The True Story Of The Rescue Of A Boys’ Soccer Team From A Flooded Cave

In 2018, twelve members of a youth soccer team in Thailand were rescued from a flooded cave, along with their assistant coach. This was after spending 17 days trapped in the cave after a massive storm made the entrance to the cave impassible. A new Netflix limited series dramatizes the rescue efforts, as well as examines how the team itself survived over two weeks in those dire conditions.

THAI CAVE RESCUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Northernmost Thailand. At the base of the Nang Non Mountains is a cave known as Tham Luang.” A massive amount of rain falls in a spot where we see a lot of trucks and other military and law enforcement vehicles. Then we see a graphic: “10 July 2018”.

The Gist: Thai Cave Rescue is a fictionalized story about the youth soccer team who was trapped in the Tham Luang cave, along with their assistant coach, for over two weeks in 2018 when a monsoon flooded the entrance to the cave. A boy named Titan (Pratya Patong) is being asked to swim his way out, 17 days after the Wild Boars team entered the cave.

We then flash back to eight hours before the team entered the cave. Titan is sleeping over the house of Coach Eak (Papangkorn Rerkchalermpoj), mainly to avoid his constantly-arguing parents. They cross the border from Myanmar into Northern Thailand together. After the soccer match that afternoon, the team is supposed to go on a field trip to explore a local cave.

At the Bangkok headquarters of the Thai Meteorological Department, an intern named Noon Kitwanichsakul (Darina Boonchu) sees a massive storm system headed to the northern border, but her boss doesn’t seem to want to issue a warning until she’s more sure. When she gets a report from an acquaintance that over an inch of rain has fallen in an hour, her concern turns to the caves in that region, which get quickly flooded and impassable. She calls the park where the caverns are, and Pim Jongkat (Manassanan Panlertwongsakul), a park ranger, notes the massive storm cloud coming their way.

We meet other members of the team, who are all excited to go to the cavern, until they find out it’s closed. Eak has the idea to go Tham Luang instead, which they enter right before the rain starts coming down.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because of its large cast and its basis in real events, Thai Cave Rescue reminds us of the recent series Five Days At Memorial, though Thai Cave Rescue has a much better ending, based on how the events played out. Viewers looking to understand the events of this story in a movie format should check out Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives.

Our Take: Thai Cave Rescue definitely makes an effort to make itself an international production that’s accessible to a wide audience. All titles and graphics are in both Thai and English, and the limited series is structured in a way that does a relatively quick job of setting up the situation so that the rest of the episodes explore the issues around the rescue.

Despite that, the first episode moves a bit slowly, mainly because we’re being introduced to so many characters. While it seems that most of the kids on the Wild Boars team are namechecked, only a couple of them get enough back story to make them distinctive. It feels like Titan is going to be the focus of the segments in the cave, probably because of his relationship with Coach Eak and how he feels about his parents.

But since the first episode sets up the circumstances that got the team caught in the cave, we don’t get to see the Australian and American rescuers who came up with some unique methods to try to get to the team members. We see the same setup we usually see in disaster-based dramas: Someone in a meteorological agency sees the looming disaster and struggles to get authorities to warn people, and people leading their lives unaware of what they’re about to face.

This just feels like a show that requires a little patience but should have a heartwarming payoff when the kids and Eak are eventually rescued. From what we’ve read, the creators, Michael Russell Gunn and Dana Ledoux Miller, strove for authenticity whenever they could, which should give the viewers a reasonable expectation that the series depicts the events as they happened with only minor alterations. If they can build some tension, even though we know how the story turns out, then the show should be an entertaining watch.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The parents of the team members gather at the entrance of the cave and pepper Pim with questions about how safe their kids might be in there.

Sleeper Star: The cinematography really does a good job of showing just how lush and dense the vegetation is in that region.

Most Pilot-y Line: One of Noon’s colleagues makes fun of how she found out about the rain in the north by telling another colleague, “Call your ex-girlfriend’s uncle and your aunty’s second cousin.”

Our Call: STREAM IT, if only because the real story behind Thai Cave Rescue is such an inspirational tale. The story is what’s going to keep viewers watching, because there aren’t really any compelling characters to latch onto.

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.