‘Beneath the Ice’ tops the streaming charts: why viewers can’t stop watching

Nobody expected a slow, snowbound mystery about a team of glaciologists to become the biggest show of the season. Yet ‘Beneath the Ice’ has spent two weeks at the top of the charts on a big streaming service, with 41 million hours watched in its first seven days alone.

The eight-part thriller follows a small research team at a remote polar station who discover a cave deep inside a glacier. On its walls is a vast pattern of carved symbols that glow faintly when the lamps go out. As the team tries to understand what they have found, radio contact with the outside world falters and members of the group begin to disagree about whether the cave should be studied or sealed.

A mystery that respects its audience

Much of the appeal lies in what the show refuses to explain. Director Mathis Arnell gives viewers clues rather than answers, and online forums have filled with theories about what the symbols mean. One popular fan account has decoded what it believes is a counting system hidden in the opening credits.

We wanted people to feel the way the scientists feel: curious, a little frightened and unable to stop looking.

Mathis Arnell, director

Real ice, real cold

The production, by Northlight Studios in Elmbridge, built its cave sets with sculpted ice and resin, and shot exterior scenes on a glacier in the Greywater mountains during a bitter spring. The cast say the cold was not acting.

By the end of each day you could not feel your fingers. That shivering in the cave scenes is real.

Freya Holm, who plays lead glaciologist Dr. Elin Vass

Holm’s performance has been widely praised, as has the eerie score, built from recordings of cracking ice and wind across the station’s antennas.

Will there be a second season?

The streaming service has not confirmed a second season, but the show’s ending leaves plenty of room for one. Arnell would say only that the story was planned as a larger arc. Until then, fans are rewatching, pausing on every frame of the cave wall and waiting.