Let There Be Bloodline

One of the best reasons for subscribing to Netflix, Bloodline, goes live today for its third and final season.

The Florida noir about one fatally-flawed family’s self-destruction looks stunning in 4K and, even when it lapses into pulp, is a binge-worthy-blast of addictive storytelling and fine performances from a cast that includes Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn and Sissy Spacek.

Variety reports the creators conceived the series to run for five or six seasons, so were surprised when Netflix wouldn’t renew it beyond a third.

“It just meant looking at our notes for what we had planned for seasons four and five and six, and figuring out what we could pull and combine in order to make the most entertaining and emotionally satisfying and fulfilling story that we could. As with everything, ideally in any of storytelling, there’s always more than what you have the time to put on the screen. This was just one of those cases. We’re very excited about this third season. And also the way it concludes. It will give the fans of the show a very fulfilling and emotional experience that continues to deepen the characters that they’ve spent 33 episodes with.”

“While it may feel overwrought in places, they have succeeded for the most part, in tying up the plotlines and wounds of the series,” Deadline Hollywood reckons.

“Part of that success, in a cast that includes the Friday Night Lights alum, Linda Cardellini and the return of sorts of Mendelsohn, is the standout performances in season 3 of matriarch Sissy Spacek and youngest son Norbert Leo Butz.

“Walking the wire in a way that previous seasons have prodded and pushed them to, their work in this last stretch takes on added purpose as we, the likely bingeing audience know it’s all over.”

Concurred New York magazine: “The third and final season of Bloodline, like the two that preceded it, is steeped in the show’s best qualities: the palpably noirish heat of the Florida Keys and fine acting from an ensemble that is truly as good as it gets on television.

“But its murders and cover-ups and layers of lies to mask the cover-ups often become extreme and trying to the patience. This is even more true in season three than it was in the first two, a sign that this feels like the right time to say good-bye to the morally corroded Rayburn family.”

? Bloodline streams from 7.00 tonight.