After most of humanity is wiped out, a group of survivors band together to survive their new post-apocalyptic hellscape, and also wander the woods a lot. Nope, this isn’t The Walking Dead — it’s The Rain, a new Netflix series from Denmark about, you guessed it, rain. Killer rain, specifically, which the show’s moody teens must avoid, or else. “Stay dry,” the tagline goes, “stay alive.”
The Rain follows two siblings, a brother and sister, who “emerge from the safety of their bunker to find all remnants of civilization gone,” according to Netflix (not unlike Rick Grimes awaking from his coma). “Soon they join a group of young survivors and together set out on a danger-filled quest through abandoned Scandinavia, searching for any sign of life. Set free from their collective past and societal rules, the group has the freedom to be who they want to be. In their struggle for survival, they discover that even in a post-apocalyptic world, there’s still love, jealousy, coming of age, and many of the problems they thought they’d left behind with the disappearance of the world they once knew.” Okay, so it’s not The Walking Dead — it’s The Walking Dead meets Riverdale.
Between Bright and now The Rain, Netflix is increasingly looking overseas for its genre programming. But because they lack familiar names to American audiences, an easy-to-understand hook is necessary. You could do a whole lot worse than “rain, but it kills people.” The Rain premieres on May 4.
