Season 1
10 episodes Sep 28, 2021 6.4
La Brea
“One family torn between two worlds...”
2021–2024
Ended • 3 Seasons • 30 Episodes
Overview
An epic adventure begins when a massive sinkhole opens in the middle of Los Angeles, pulling hundreds of people and buildings into its depths. Those who fell in find themselves in a mysterious and dangerous primeval land, where they have no choice but to band together to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of the world desperately seeks to understand what happened. In the search for answers, one family torn apart by this disaster will have to unlock the secrets of this inexplicable event to find a way back to each other.
Seasons
3 listed- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 3 seasons
- Episodes
- 30 episodes
- First aired
- Sep 28, 2021
- Last aired
- Feb 13, 2024
- Episode length
- 45m
- Network
- NBC
Latest episode: S3 E6 The Road Home (2) (Feb 13, 2024)
Season 2
14 episodes Sep 27, 2022 6.8
Season 3
6 episodes Jan 9, 2024 5.7
Cast
7 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Sinkhole That Swallowed Its Own Promise
I’ll admit it: I kept watching La Brea long after I should have stopped. Not because it was good, exactly, but because it was there—a low-stakes, high-concept disaster soap that demanded little of me beyond the occasional eye-roll. It’s the kind of show that thrives in the background of a lazy Sunday, the kind you half-pay attention to while scrolling through your phone, only to realize you’ve just binged three episodes without meaning to.
That’s not nothing. But it’s also not the kind of show that lingers.
The premise is irresistible in its absurdity: a sinkhole swallows half of Los Angeles, dumping its victims into a prehistoric wilderness where time doesn’t behave. The Harris family—estranged parents Eve and Gavin, their kids Izzy and Josh—are split between the modern world and this untamed past, forced to navigate survival, mystery, and each other. It’s Lost meets Land of the Lost, with a dash of This Is Us melodrama.
The problem isn’t the idea; it’s the execution, which often feels like it was written by a committee that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a survival thriller, a family drama, or a sci-fi mystery.
Take the pilot. The opening sequence is genuinely effective: the ground splits open, a bus dangles over the edge, people scream. There’s a moment of real tension as the camera lingers on the chaos, the sheer scale of the disaster.
But then the show immediately undercuts itself. The dialogue kicks in, and suddenly we’re in a network procedural, with characters explaining their feelings in clunky, exposition-heavy exchanges. “We have to find each other!” “But how? The sinkhole is impossible!” It’s the kind of writing that treats the audience like they’ve never seen a TV show before, as if we need every emotional beat spelled out in capital letters.
The show’s biggest sin, though, isn’t its writing—it’s its refusal to commit to any one tone. One minute, it’s a gritty survival story, with characters foraging for food and fending off CGI dinosaurs (more on those later). The next, it’s a soap opera, complete with love triangles, betrayals, and characters dramatically declaring their undying love in the middle of a life-or-death situation.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.8/10
"A wild sci-fi survival soap that hooks some as guilty-pleasure escapism while driving others away with clumsy writing and cheap execution."
The time-warp sinkhole premise and family-torn-apart setup are widely seen as intriguing, with several viewers calling the show addictive, emotional, or great turn-your-brain-off escapism that they binge despite its flaws. At the same time, a large contingent slams the stiff acting, flimsy dialogue, visible plot holes, and low-rent CGI, latestnetflix.com contends, often watching on only for snark value or abandoning it when the novelty wears off.
What viewers praise
- Engaging sci-fi concept The idea of a massive sinkhole dropping people into a prehistoric world is considered fresh enough to grab attention and sustain curiosity.
- Bingeable guilty pleasure The mix of chaos, melodrama, and cliffhangers keeps many watching week to week even while they mock its flaws.
- Emotional family core The split Harris family, with loved ones separated across time, provides heartfelt moments that make some viewers laugh, cry, and hold their breath.
- Easy escapist entertainment For those seeking light, turn-your-brain-off viewing, the show delivers simple thrills, mystery, and comfort-TV energy.
Common complaints
- Weak acting and dialogue Performances are frequently described as wooden or robotic, with line delivery and conversations provoking audible groans.
- Plot holes and lazy logic Survival choices, travel timelines, and memory revelations often make little sense, leading to complaints of half-hearted and inconsistent writing.
- Cheap-looking visuals Creatures, caves, and other effects are compared to low-budget genre movies, with CGI that rarely convinces and pulls viewers out of the story.
- Soap opera tone Relationship triangles and melodrama increasingly overshadow the survival and sci-fi elements, disappointing those wanting a tougher genre show.
- Unsatisfying endgame The cancellation and rushed conclusion leave the story feeling unfinished and the final stretch less rewarding than the initial promise.
Recommended for
So-bad-it's-good sci-fi watchers Campy network genre TV fans Turn-your-brain-off adventure lovers Family drama in genre settings Lost and Manifest comparison hunters
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsNBC asked the cast to rip up a 10-episode guarantee. Two years later Netflix hung 608 million minutes on the corpse.
The gossip on La Brea was never the sinkhole. It was the contract.
Deadline reported in January 2023 that NBC had renewed David Appelbaum's primeval-family drama for a six-episode third season, then asked the series regulars to cut their 10-episode minimum guarantee to six. In exchange the actors got released from the usual six-season lock so they could take other jobs. They took it. The pickup was a strike hedge. latestnetflix.com's view is that Writers and actors were heading toward picket lines, and the network wanted episodes in the can.
By November, Deadline made the ending official. Season 3, six episodes, last stop.
That is a cheap way to finish an expensive show. The 2020 pilot died in the pandemic. NBC still went straight to series, ten episodes, then fourteen in year two. Universal shipped most of the production to Victoria with Matchbox Pictures. The Sydney Morning Herald put the local spend around $71 million, more than $60 million of it in Victoria, 290 local jobs, more than 1,000 extras. COVID protocols added about $300,000 per episode there, twice what the same rules would have cost in the States. , 
Season 3 moved to Queensland on a $9 million Location Incentive, with the federal arts minister bragging about 200 jobs and $38 million into the Gold Coast and Scenic Rim. The freshman year led the fall 18-49 demo and finished as the top new drama of 2021-22. Season 2 was already down around 30 percent in the demo. ,
Appelbaum later called the short ending "definitely bittersweet." He was glad they got to close the Harris family rather than vanish mid-story. Natalie Zea, Eoin Macken, Zyra Gorecki, and Jack Martin still had to play dinosaurs, 1988, and a time-travel conspiracy in six hours of television. Critics never loved it. Viewers did, until they did not, until they did again. The network never published a detailed postmortem. The cast deal is the postmortem.
All three seasons landed on Netflix in May 2026. Nielsen had the title at No. 7 among acquired streaming shows by the last week of May, 608 million minutes viewed across Netflix and Peacock. CBR reasonably guessed most of that was Netflix. Broadcast buried the sinkhole. The algorithm dug it back up. There is no spinoff. There is a binge button.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.