Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Moonshine’ On The CW, A Dramedy About A Campground In Nova Scotia And The Dysfunctional Family Battling To Take It Over

We first saw Moonshine back in March; we thought it was going to debut on Amazon Freevee, but it turned out that it was just going to premiere in the UK on that service. We thought that the Canadian series was way too good to not be shown in the US, so we were happy to hear that The CW picked up the show for a summer run. In fact, the timing of its US debut is pretty perfect, given the show’s summer vibe.

MOONSHINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A needle drops on a record album, and “Bad Side Of The Moon” starts to play while a rental car drives down a shoreline road.

The Gist: In the car is Lidia Bennett (Jennifer Finnigan) with her son Finn (Calem MacDonald) and daughter Elanor (Celia Owen). They’re coming from New York, where Lidia runs an architectural firm with her husband Daniel (Jonathan Silverman), to her Nova Scotia hometown for the funeral for her aunt Felicia.

She’s going to the Moonshine campground, owned by her parents, Bea and Ken Finley-Cullen (Corrine Koslo, Peter MacNeill). Lidia is the only one of Bea and Ken’s five kids who left town; Nora (Emma Hunter) works at the local radio station, Rhian (Anastasia Phillips) does most of the maintenance work, Ryan (Tom Stevens) mainly hangs around with his girlfriend Crystal Leblanc (Erin Darke) between rehab stints, and youngest sibling Sammy (Alexander Nunez) is an all-around helper.

Rhian, always resentful for constantly being in her “perfect” sister’s shadow, gets ticked when she sees Lidia at the campground’s main house, but everyone else is happy to see her. Lidia and her kids stay in Felicia’s quirky trailer, and Elanor sneaks off to the beach to hang out with Ryan and a bunch of townspeople at a raucous bonfire. Lidia drives a golf cart out to retrieve her, and the cart accidentally runs over a guest named Colin (Farid Yazdani). But the night takes an even more surprising turn when Bea suffers a mini-stroke.

Bea insists she’s fine, but Lidia thinks it’s time for both her parents to take it easy, maybe even sell the place. Bea doesn’t think anyone would be interested, and besides, her place is at the Moonshine.

When Ken reads Felicia’s will that morning, not only are the siblings shocked to find out that she owned 43% of the Moonshine — Ken and Bea would pay Felicia in shares when they were short on cash — but that Felicia left it to Lidia, “my least-hated niece,” telling her to make it “something worth a damn.” Rhian, of course, is enraged, and declares war on her sister over this. Ryan and Crystal plot to buy the shares. Lidia tries to figure out how to sell the shares back to her parents.

But then Lidia’s world turns upside down, prompting her to stay at the Moonshine for a lot longer than she initially planned.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The oh-so-Canadian summer vibe of Moonshine is very reminiscent of The Lake, albeit with a bit more drama.

Our Take: Moonshine, created by Sheri Elwood (Lucifer) actually debuted on the CBC in 2021 and will be going into its third season later this month. The show is such a breezy summer watch, we wondered why it took so long to find a south-of-the-border home. Heck, even the UK got the show sooner than we did, when it debuted on Amazon Freevee there in March.

The show is a pretty standard-grade “quirky small-town” story, but that just means that its success or failure depends completely on the characters that are in that small town. For the most part, we’re just introduced to the Finley-Cullen family, but they’re big enough to pretty much fill the “quirky townspeople” requirement for the first episode.

We don’t get a ton of background to Finnigan’s character, who seems to be less of a fish out of water than she’s supposed to be, having distanced herself from her family both physically and emotionally years prior. In fact, she and her teenage kids seem to fit in pretty well from the jump; the only person who seems truly out of place is Lidia’s husband Daniel, and he’s your typical scripted New York character that thinks his salt-of-the-earth in-laws are “degenerates.” Thankfully, he’s not around for very long.

While Lidia trying to re-find herself at the Moonshine is the main storyline, other stories are alluded to, like her parents hiding a secret about the resort that none of the kids know about, Rhian’s marriage to local cop Terry Gallagher (James Gilbert) isn’t quite as solid as she thinks it is, Ryan growing magic mushrooms, and whatever Crystal’s mother Jill (Allegra Fulton), who was in a relationship with Felicia when she died, has been doing. Even Colin, who seems to just be an innocent victim of a wayward golf cart, is at the Moonshine for a reason.

Everyone in the Finley-Cullen family has a plotline, which could be good, or it could make for an unfocused show. It might not matter either way, as the story of Lidia’s homecoming, how she tries to improve the Moonshine, all the surprises that are coming her way, and the overall laid-back vibe of the series will be more than enough to make us forget about any plots that are underserved.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Rhian realizes that Lidia is staying, and runs out of the main house after her, yelling “No, no, no, no!” We pan to a lobster trap out in the bay, go under the water, see and see the lobster-filled trap lifted out.

Sleeper Star: Corrine Koslo is a hoot as Bea; she’s tough as nails, takes no crap and pretends to take down potential guests’ phone numbers while pouring herself a cup of tea.

Most Pilot-y Line: “What’s the point of family if they can’t help you do illegal shit?” asks Elanor when Finn, helping the band at the local watering hole, won’t let her in the back door.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Moonshine is a fun show with a dreamy, summer vibe, solid performances from Finnigan and the rest of the cast, and just enough darkness and drama to make things interesting.

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.