Netflix Canada is selling its next thriller on the strength of its casting — specifically, the jawlines of a province’s fishing fleet. “Welcome to Newfoundland! All our fisherman look like this. Don’t yours??” the streamer’s Canadian account posted on X, promoting the Oct. 8 premiere of Below, a six-episode limited series starring Josh Hartnett.
The date was locked in back on Sept. 10, when Netflix dropped the official trailer and key art — the same day the series opened the Toronto International Film Festival as its Primetime Opening Night selection. What the Canada account adds is the pitch: come for the sea creature, stay for the Newfoundlanders.
Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a stubborn outport fisherman still haunted by his father’s disappearance in the water decades ago, who must hold his family and his dwindling town together when something starts taking boats. Mackenzie Davis plays a visiting marine researcher, Fonda Howander; Charlie Heaton of Stranger Things plays Calvin’s son Wade; Ruby Stokes, Rohan Campbell, Kaleb Horn and Willow Kean fill out the Penney clan. All six episodes arrive at once.
The show’s Snook’s Arm outlives its real-life model by six years
Creator and showrunner Jesse McKeown sets the story in Snook’s Arm, named for a real Newfoundland community that took the provincial government’s resettlement buyout in 2018, when its last 10 residents left. The fictional version has held out six years longer, and a vote on whether to accept the money drives much of the tension. McKeown, whose wife is a Newfoundlander, told the Canadian Press he had wanted to write about the province for 18 years, drawn to the contrast between “how unforgiving and scary the landscape was, and just how warm and fun and inviting the people and the community were.” He compares Calvin to an iceberg: “You only see this much, but then he’s got a lot of stuff going on below the surface.”
Filming ran from June to October 2025, mostly around St. John’s, Conception Harbour, Brigus South, Bacon Cove and Pouch Cove, with crews pumping artificial fog across the bays and submerging a full-size prop house for a month to get the rot right. Hartnett spent months with a dialect coach on the local accent and, by the time TIFF rolled around, had completed a screech-in at a St. John’s pub — the ceremony that requires kissing a cod to become an honorary Newfoundlander.
“It felt like we’ve entered into something — we’ve been invited into something that I don’t think many people, if they’d just come here as a tourist, would have a chance to be a part of,” he said at a festival Q&A.
Reviews out of Toronto were warm: NOW Toronto gave the first two episodes four stars, calling the series a mix of “sea creatures, charismatic characters, political conflict.”
Whether the Rock’s working fishermen actually resemble Hartnett remains unverified. Netflix Canada has a marketing budget and no apparent interest in checking. Below hits the service Oct. 8.
