Nick Murphy gives thrillers and period dramas a strong sense of place. We are less convinced by the suspense: in UNTAMED, the landscape holds our attention better than the investigation.
Fi1m perspective
In UNTAMED (2025), the Yosemite wilderness keeps holding our attention after the investigation has begun to wander. Michael McDonough’s cinematography gives the landscape scale and makes the people within it seem properly small. Nick Murphy shares directing duties with Thomas Bezucha and Neasa Hardiman, so neither the credit nor the blame belongs to him alone. The views are worth the time spent on them, though too many scenes between them could take place elsewhere.
His move from documentaries into scripted drama led to Occupation (2009), the television miniseries that marked his breakthrough. The Awakening (2011), his feature debut, put Rebecca Hall in a supernatural mystery set after the First World War; Murphy also contributed to the screenplay. Blood (2012), filmed in Merseyside with Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham, followed. The move from a ghost story to a psychological thriller about family and moral ambiguity suggests a continuing interest in people under pressure, without needing the same explanation for their unease.
Television subsequently became his main field, taking in The Last Kingdom (2015) and A Spy Among Friends (2022), the latter starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce. Period settings and psychological pressure recur, and Murphy favours believable characters and locations that earn their effect without Gothic clichés. That is a sensible basis for a thriller. It still leaves the director needing to make a particular place matter to what happens, which is where our confidence in the work becomes qualified.
In UNTAMED, Todd Fjelsted’s production design supplies a credible setting for police work, but too little of that work feels particular to Yosemite. The directors keep the wilderness prominent without consistently making it a source of suspense. We were frustrated by the mystery’s forced turns because they kept interrupting the pleasure of watching Eric Bana and Lily Santiago work together. Their engaging investigative partnership deserves a case with fewer familiar detours. Anyone choosing the series for a tightly worked mystery should temper their expectations.
Biography
Nick Murphy is a British director, producer and writer. He was born and grew up in Merseyside, north-west England, and began his career as an editor of news and current affairs for the BBC before directing documentaries from 1996.
He later moved into drama, directing the feature films The Awakening (2011) and Blood (2012). His television credits include episodes of The Last Kingdom (2015), Save Me (2018), A Spy Among Friends (2022), A Christmas Carol (2019) and the series Untamed (2025) and A Thousand Blows (2025). He has won a BAFTA award and a Royal Television Society award.
