The Newfoundland connections behind Netflix’s Below
Josh Hartnett as fisherman Calvin Penney in Below, Netflix’s upcoming thriller set and filmed in Newfoundland.
Photo credit: Netflix.
Perry Chafe grew up in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador, a small fishing community. Now the Canadian television writer, showrunner and producer is part of the writing team behind Below, Netflix's upcoming creature thriller about a small Newfoundland fishing town threatened by a mysterious sea creature.
Pacesetter Productions lists Jesse McKeown, Chafe, Karen Walton and Natty Zavitz as the series' writers. For Chafe, Below joins a career that includes Republic of Doyle, Frontier, Caught and Son of a Critch, as well as Saint-Pierre, which he co-created. He now lives in St. John's.
Chafe has also written about fishing communities in his fiction. His novel Closer by Sea is set in a small island community where fishing boats, cod and the local fish plant are part of everyday life, against the backdrop of the 1990s decline of the Grand Banks cod fishery. Below brings him to another story centred on a Newfoundland fishing community, this time with something dangerous in the water.
There is no established creative connection between Closer by Sea and Below, although the overlap raises questions about what Chafe's experience growing up in Petty Harbour brought to the writing room.
Series creator Jesse McKeown has his own history with Newfoundland. He has said he has been coming to the province for many years and that it has become part of his life. McKeown has described Newfoundland as rugged, dangerous and isolated, while also talking about the warmth and humour he has found in its communities. He said he had long wanted to set something there.
The directing team adds another Newfoundland connection. Netflix and Pacesetter list Helen Shaver, Jamie Childs and Stephen Dunn as the series' three directors, and Dunn is a St. John's native.
Dunn's first feature, Closet Monster, was also made in Newfoundland. Set and filmed in St. John's, the coming-of-age film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and won Best Canadian Feature Film. For Below, Dunn was again directing a project filmed in Newfoundland, this time a creature thriller about a small fishing town under attack from a mysterious sea creature.
Below was filmed in Newfoundland and is set there, rather than using the province to represent another location. Chafe's involvement adds a particularly specific connection to the kind of community at the centre of the story. Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove, where he grew up, still describes itself in its municipal plan as “first and foremost an active fishing community.”
