Bloodline episodes 1-6 recap: Netflix's most daring series yet?

On the heels of the deliciously baroque House of Cards and the cheerfully lurid Orange Is the New Black, Bloodline might be Netflix's most daring plunge into original programming yet. Not because it is strikingly slow moving or because it presents familiar actors in unfamiliar contexts (e.g. loveable Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights as a sweary police chief who doesn't always do the right thing).

No, Bloodline (from the makers of FX's Damages) represents a dice roll on the part of Netflix because it is unabashedly in the tradition of the sprawling family soap operas of the '70s and '80s. It doesn't always want you to know it - certainly the moody title sequence and often portentous dialogue attest to a desire to appear thoroughly contemporary.

And yet, with its vast, feuding cast of siblings, spouses, in-laws, outlaws and everything in between, who could deny that here is a series splashing in the same gene pool as the big-haired schlock-fests of a less sophisticated era?

This isn't a problem so long as you can tolerate a degree of baseline silliness. We open with a hammy voice-over from John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler, aka Coach Taylor), warning that "sometimes you know something's coming…and there's nothing you can do to stop it".

A bus creeps along the Florida Keys, bringing, Voiceover John explains, bad news in the shape of eldest Rayburn sibling Danny (Ben Mendelsohn, introduced to us dozing indolently, his mouth open in the fashion of someone who needs to get his life together).

Why Danny is such a baleful omen for the rest of his family - gathering at mom and pop's ocean-side hotel for an anniversary shindig - is not immediately elaborated upon. Still, we are given to understand he is the designated Black Sheep (as in, everyone constantly refers to him as the 'Black Sheep') and that, where he goes, trouble follows.

Just how much trouble is thundering down the track is made explicit in the first of many, many (many) flash-forwards to Coach Rayburn staggering through a night-time swamp, with Danny over his shoulder. It is uncertain whether Danny is dead or unconscious, much less why John is huffing through the twilight with his bro slung on his back.

Helpfully, Voiceover John pops up again to confirm that, yes, we are watching something awful unfold - and that the seeds of the tragedy lie in Danny's return.

But though Danny is the designated wayward son, it is quickly apparent that the rest of the clan isn't exactly without blemish either. Dad Robert (Sam Shepard) is taciturn and distant, preferring to strum a ukulele than engage in conversation; mother Sally (Sissy Spacek) appears fluttering and disconnected - or maybe this is just Spacek's inability to plug into her character (often it seems as if she is happy to let her sunhat do the acting for her).

Upstanding lawyer daughter Meg (Linda Cardellini), meanwhile, is introduced en flagrante with a handsome beau soon revealed to be Not Her Boyfriend (her boyfriend lacks stubble and looks harmless).

Then, there's youngest sibling Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), a chilled-out Dude Lebowski-type who, as dad Robert will put it later, is partial to throwing a one-man 3pm cocktail hour - and, on yeah, has a real problem with Danny swanning into everyone's life and precipitating a melodrama.

A row over whether Danny can bring a girlfriend he may or may not have met five minutes previously to the party, for instance, very nearly prompts a fist-fight, as Kevin turns all hot headed, and respectable John (second born but de factor senior sibling) is required to aggressively intervene.

At this point, we've already had confirmation that Future John's mutterings about Danny representing bad juju are more than just scene-setting. En route to the familial bash, Black Sheep has hooked up with unshaven ne'er do-well Eric, a small time criminal who wonders if Danny wants in on a 'big score'.

Danny demurs, sort of - he's back to see his family and, for now, is reluctant to involve himself in anything untoward. Also brother John happens to be the police chief and is keeping tabs on Eric (still on parole). Even for a loose cannon like Danny, that feels a tad too close to home.

Here, Bloodline takes a turn for the unexpected, with a veer into cookie-cutter police procedural. Out in the swamps - yes, possibly the same swamps where John and Danny will have their scary struggle in the future - a body has been found. It's a teenage girl, her remains horrifically scarred, True Detective ritualistic-murder fashion (the actual cause of death will turn out to be relatively ho-hum).

Rather than ratcheting up the dramatic stakes, this departure into cop show cliché brings further muddiness: does Bloodline wish to be a grisly murder-mystery as well as a messy family drama? Maybe not because, moments after Sheriff John says "it's going to be a long night", we cut to him lounging on a sun-kissed beach, fretting about his relationship with Danny. This is just a guess but if you'd been up until dawn dealing with a teenager's gruesome death, perhaps you would not be inclined to spend the next day basking under the palm-trees, wondering why you and your sibling can't just get along.

Danny is confused too - and his confusion is confusing us (you'll be confused a lot watching Bloodline - almost as confused as the characters). Initially he didn't want to come home at all. Now his dearest wish is to stay and help with the family business. Of course it isn't that simple - he's already explained to Eric that he got involved in a bad financial deal in Miami, so his return to the Keys isn't entirely down to a sense of obligation.

He is also carrying around a whole lot of post-traumatic guilt, to the point of being prone to delusions. When diving for lobsters, he spies a sea horse necklace on the ocean floor - only for it to be revealed to be a random shard of metal that cuts his hand. Was the necklace an illusion? And could it have something to do with the spooky woman glimpsed on Danny's coach ride south, with whom he is later seen having mysterious chats?

The problem is that Robert isn't sure he wants Danny around, as he informs John when the police chief advocates on his brother's behalf. Still, being a sit on the fence kind of guy who'd really prefer to be left alone thunking his ukulele (he may very well sleep with his ukulele and have a pet name for it), Robert leaves it up to the kids to decide if Danny can stay. Kevin is dead against - however John overrules him, only to backtrack when Danny, following a druggy night out with Eric, is found sprawled naked on the hotel grounds, in full view of guests.

After so much meandering and tonal confusion, the pilot ends with a surprisingly winning scene. We're back with Future John and dead/unconscious Danny, only they're on a boat now and - woah - John is splashing petrol and throwing a lit match down. He's just blown up the boat with Danny on it! Even if you've been annoyed by Mendelsohn's trying-too-hard method-y acting, this feels excessive. "We're not bad people but we did a bad thing," says Voiceover John, the most succinct line thus far in a series happy for its bloat to show.

Alas, this nicely shocking reveal is quickly a receding memory as Bloodline doubles down on its soapier aspects, so that it feels as if you're watching a queasy mash-up of Six Feet Under and True Detective.

Instead of going with the plan and leaving, Danny doubles back to the hotel, where he confronts Robert on the shoreline. The father-son tete-a-tete is presented as a menacing face-off, Danny villainously intoning: "I thought maybe we could work things out before you die."

Straight afterwards, we cut to a hospital ward, where Robert is unconscious and Danny is presenting rest of the Rayburns with an entirely unconvincing account of what happened. He says he and dad hashed it out, then Robert got back in his kayak and uh...keeled over (after ukuleles, kayaks are his favourite thing in the world).

He is obviously lying - except he isn't, as a closing flashback confirms (Robert simply suffered a stroke). Which, frankly, feels a bit cheap: encouraged to believe Danny thwacked the Dad Who Never Loved Him over the head with an oar, we are then expected to be satisfied with the mundane truth that the Old Man merely took a funny turn.

Robert eventually stirs from his coma and is haunted by visions of a young girl wearing a pendant - identical to the seahorse pendant Danny saw / didn't see on his dive. Thus it is revealed that there was a fifth Rayburn sibling, a little girl now dead. Inevitably, Dastardly Danny had a hand in her drowning - Dad's endless flashbacks include woozy footage of his son freaking out on a boat, the same day sister Sarah died.

Later, in another flashback - by now everyone is having flashbacks, apart from Meg who is mostly thinking about the dreamy dude she is enjoying regular car sex with - we see a baby-faced Sam Shepard lookalike thumping the tar out of 16-year-old Danny. You can almost feel Bloodline thunking you over the head with its message: All Families Have Secrets - Especially Good Looking Television Families Living In Big Houses.

It's compelling stuff - a bit pantomime for sure but at least kicking the plot into gear and distracting from the fact that, several hours in, Bloodline is still scrambling for its dramatic moorings. One moment, we're wading around in kitchen sink hokum -see the beyond-dreary side-plot about Robert writing Danny out of the will - the next we're looking over the shoulder of John as he tries to unravel the mystery of the burned teenager.

Disappointingly, this has nothing to do with cultists in the swamps and is the result of a people-trafficking run gone wrong: the same - ta da! - people-trafficking run Eric and Danny assisted by shipping contraband petrol (yes, Danny eventually took Eric up on his offer).

Bloodline reaches for catharsis early, with Robert, just out of hospital, dropping dead on the beach. But his passing is essentially brushed over. Nobody is terribly upset he's gone (now John, too, is having flashbacks to dad's crazed attack on Danny).

It is here, also, that the ludicrousness cranks towards high-octane, as an old navy friend of Robert, in town for the funeral, reveals to Danny that, back when he was a police officer on the Keys, he encouraged the rest of the family to testify against dad over his assault.

The twist is unveiled via a two-hander sequence bordering on camp. In a police evidence room on the mainland, John discovers his taped testimony from the case is missing. He has his suspicions - immediately confirmed back on the Keys where retired detective Potts presents Danny with the self-same recording.

Alone in his car, Danny listens to 14-year-old John insist the attack was a mere hit and run, lying to protect his father and deny his brother justice.

This is all terribly overwrought - and there is further incoherence as, upset at the news, Danny heads off to Key West, the local debauched party town, to deal with his pain by taking drugs and almost getting off with a hot stranger (turns out she was just hanging out with him to score his cocaine).

Fifteen shots of tequila and one bar-brawl later, he's staggering along the side of a highway, where a randomer in an SUV picks him up and drives him to a hippy LSD orgy. Here things go properly weird and bendy.

In a delusional trance, Danny is confronted by John - who tells him the reason he lied all those years ago was to protect Danny. If the cops found out about dad's assault, they would surely look into Sarah's death and he would be implicated. It's all too much for drug-stupor-Danny - he grabs John's gun and blows his brains out. Only he doesn't because, duh, it was just a paranoid vision.

The scene encapsulates all that is good and bad about Bloodline. It's beautifully staged and Danny is believable as a man who has spent his entire adult life fighting demons and losing. But it's also gaudy and hysterical, jarring with the slow, cautious tone elsewhere in evidence.

Bloodline is terrifically handsome and clearly considers itself Quality Television. But, in its mood and pacing, it is seems unsure where it is going and it isn't long before the never-ending flashbacks begin to feel like a shtick.

Six episodes in, with the atmosphere swinging between portentous and over-pumped, the suspicion that you are watching a guilty pleasure dressed up as something more sophisticated is hard to dispel.

More thoughts...

- The characters in Bloodline swear a lot. It's genuinely a shock seeing upstanding Coach Taylor unload a fusillade of f-bombs for no particular reason.

- Chloe Sevigny is wasted as sleazy Eric's younger sister. She and Danny have a 'thing' - but her character seems to exist merely to serve as a foil for the troubled Black Sheep.

- The acting is a bit all over the place. As stand-up John, Kyle Chandler is nicely understated. Ben Mendelsohn's Danny, however, dials the intensity up too high. Every time he's on screen, he threatens to burn a hole in the scenery. He's always cranked up to ten and is exhausting to watch.

- The Florida Keys are a potentially great setting, a grey zone where troubled people go to escape. But, beyond rubbing the nice weather in the viewers' faces, Bloodline under-utilises the location, which feels like a glorified cardboard backdrop.

- There's a great deal of padding. Kevin's marriage break-up feels like something bunged in to distract us from the main narrative - as does Meg's sleazy romance with the hunky property developer.

- The title sequence and theme song are fantastic, conjuring a Southern Gothic atmosphere that belies the sometimes ho-hum melodrama on screen.

- We need to cut to the chase, and soon. We know Danny ends up dead / unconscious on a burning boat and that John is somehow implicated. So quit teasing and answer our questions already.