Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wreck’ On Hulu, A Horror Comedy That Involves A Cruise Ship, A Missing Woman And A Killer In A Duck Costume

How many shows where we see rich white people acting like jerks are we supposed to tolerate in one year. In the case of Wreck, a new British horror-comedy on Hulu, it seems like the rich people all work on a ship, and they act like jerks to each other and the less-wealthy staff who are more like glorified interns.

WRECK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman swims in a pool.

The Gist: Pippa Walsh (Jodie Tyack) sees Danny Jones (Jack Rowan) in the locker room, and he says he misses her. As she walks through what looks like a shopping mall, she’s confronted by someone in a duck costume, wearing a raincoat. When she exits the mall, it’s evident that she’s on a massive cruise ship; when cornered by the menacing duck, Pippa gets on the railing, gives the duck the double bird and dives backwards, supposedly into the water.

Three months later, a new group of recruits gets their orientation on the same ship, the Sacramentum. The group includes Jamie Walsh (Oscar Kennedy), a 19-year-old who is posing as his friend Cormac Kelly (Peter Claffey) in order to find out what happened to his sister; he doesn’t believe the reports that she jumped to her death. When he goes to his cabin, he’s shocked to see Cormac there; he’s there to try to get back together with Rosie (Miya Ocego), an entertainer on the ship.

As Jamie asks around about Pippa, he finds out quickly that she was dating Danny, so he sneaks into Danny’s cabin — almost getting found out when Danny and a fellow entertainer, Sophia Leigh (Alice Nokes), talk about a member of their group that’s looking to leave the ship. Jamie eventually finds Pippa’s cell phone under Danny’s mattress.

He immediately connects with another new recruit, Vivian Lim (Thaddea Graham), and they become fast friends. He tells her why he’s there and she agrees to help him. At a new staff initiation, Danny tells Jamie he recognizes him from somewhere but Jamie manages to redirect that question. He tries to get him to talk about Pippa, but Danny is extremely dismissive, calling her “clingy.” Little does Jamie know that he won’t have Danny to get pissed off at much longer.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A darker Love Boat? A lighter 1899? The White Lotus on the seas? Triangle of Sadness minus the puking? Not sure.

Our Take: You ever hear the term “Nothingburger?” It’s been around for decades, but we tend to hear it on Shark Tank when Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary slams a business idea for not having anything of substance behind it. We feel that if creator Ryan J. Brown were in front of the sharks pitching Wreck, Mr. Wonderful would throw that term out immediately.

Why do we think Wreck is a nothingburger? Because there aren’t any characters in the show we care about, and they’re in a situation we really can’t connect to. Even Jamie, who is there to figure out what happened to his sister, doesn’t have much in the way of a personality besides the fact that he sees visions of his sister.

It feels like it might be a “rich people getting killed” narrative a la the aforementioned The White Lotus, but the “rich kids” also work on the ship as performers. It doesn’t feel like there’s all that much class separation among the cast, unless the class is “super pretty” vs. “attractive but made plainer by show makeup.”

We just left the first episode feeling like we didn’t know much more about the story or most of the characters than we did going in. Sure, there’s a whole season left to go here. But at this point during most shows of this nature, we at least have an idea who are the “good guys” and who are the assholes. But to be honest, just about everyone here is an asshole.

This means we don’t care who is killed, we don’t care who gets caught as the killer or killers in the duck suit, and we’re not finding the antics of everyone on the ship all that funny or interesting. Not a good incentive to keep watching, is it?

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: The duck-clad killer claims another victim, and puts the body inside a secret panel in the hallway. Somehow, as the duck drags the victim down the hall, no one sees it and no trail of blood is left behind.

Sleeper Star: Harriet Webb is staff captain Karen Macintyre. Her speech to the new recruits is funny enough and strict enough that we hope to see more of her through the series.

Most Pilot-y Line: Part of the staff initiation involves a fish. When Jamie is alarmed when Danny tells him that all he had to do was kiss the fish, we cringed. But, to be honest, we also laughed a little bit.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Maybe we’re just having a bad week, but we just have no F’s to give when it comes to any of the characters in Wreck. Well, maybe we root for the killer duck to show up, but that’s not a good thing.

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.