Time is one’s enemy and friend in a place like Yosemite National Park, the setting for Netflix’s new miniseries, Untamed. Horseback riding, for instance, feels like an eternity, but it is Federal Agent Kyle Turner’s (Eric Bana) preferred transportation method. He’s teaching those ways to his partner Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), coming from Los Angeles. They’re investigating a death within the park.

Untamed‘s decedent is Lucy Cook (Ezra Franky), a woman involved in Yosemite’s drug trade which reaches nearby towns. That’s not the only mystery that the park holds, as Kyle is still on the hook for another man’s disappearance. Nonetheless, Kyle and Naya’s new case haunts more, and they work separately and together, gathering evidence within Yosemite’s large grounds.

Kyle and Naya go somewhere where they can find answers about Lucy Cook’s death – the park’s tent city. But of course, a big chunk of their work involves sitting in their homes working with the evidence. Lucy’s mystery is bigger than just another person in the drug trade, as a lead comes from a seemingly sketchy young visitor.

This miniseries comes from Elle and Mark L. Smith, the latter writing The Revenant, which explains its preference for nature. But that’s not saying that Untamed isn’t versatile, as it comfortably shuttles back and forth between natural and exurban sets. The latter is where Kyle deals with his ex-wife Jill Bodwin (Rosemarie DeWitt), seemingly collateral damage for Kyle’s past policing mistakes.

Outside of the scenes in town, Kyle and Naya do things that are customary in crime solving miniseries like Untamed. Kyle knocks on people’s doors, home to both Indigenous and white people, Naya insists on interviewing people and gets her chance. This isn’t the first rural procedural, but there’s something beautifully different about those genre staples taking place outdoors.

Again, one may think that Untamed is the typical mystery that Netflix produces bi-monthly but there’s great craftsmanship here. Subtle sound design does competent work in capturing Yosemite’s deceitful peace, as well as the ghosts that haunt its stubborn inhabitants. And of course, whoever invented television did it to capture Eric Bana and Rosemarie DeWitt looking beautifully forlorn, haunted.

Untamed shows Yosemite and its surrounding towns as a microcosm of America, a place full of ghosts, mysteries without solutions. Again, it has its genre staples, old adages that remind viewers that there’s more to someone’s death. It’s a competent, satisfying watch that takes us step by step with Kyle, an antihero sympathetic enough because of his curious nature.

Stream Untamed on Netflix.