This small-town drama has quietly grow to be successful on Netflix. Followers credit score its relatable allure and unmatched cliffhangers.

A metropolis lady relocates to a sleepy city to restart her life, reconnect together with her household and switch over a brand new web page.

It’s not Cousins Seaside, Mass.; Ransom Canyon, Texas; or Serenity, S.C. And it’s not Virgin River, Calif., both. However it’s shut. Welcome to Timberlake, the picturesque Canadian city on the heart of Sullivan’s Crossing — a leafy, idyllic setting that may really feel like a welcomed respite from the crazed actual world. Right here, time slows down, folks actually discuss to one another, and you’ll tune in a bit extra to the finer particulars of life to determine what issues most.

Tailored from the bestselling books by Virgin River writer Robyn Carr, Sullivan’s Crossing follows Boston neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan (Morgan Kohan), whose completely deliberate life is upended after knowledgeable disaster. She strikes again to her hometown in rural Nova Scotia for a recent begin and to rebuild her relationship together with her estranged father, Sully (Gilmore Ladies’ Scott Patterson), all of the whereas unexpectedly falling in love with a ruggedly good-looking handyman named Cal (One Tree Hill’s Chad Michael Murray) and making an attempt to save lots of the household campground, the Crossing, from monetary damage and actual property vultures.

However Maggie’s transition from the massive metropolis to small-town dwelling is something however easy amid romantic turmoil, surprising reunions and life-altering choices. There are love triangles. Makeups and breakups. Household secrets and techniques unearthed and relationships mended. Pregnancies and miscarriages. Medical mysteries and life-and-death crises. Births and deaths. Sullivan’s Crossing has all of it.

Canadian catnip

The collection originated in Canada, premiering March 19, 2023, on CTV, the place it was the community’s most-watched Canadian drama throughout the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 broadcast seasons. It later aired stateside on the CW, the place it is likely one of the community’s most-watched reveals for 3 seasons and counting.

It discovered a complete new viewers when its first two seasons premiered on Netflix on July 8. The present was streaming catnip for American viewers — Season 1 was one of many prime 10 most-watched reveals within the U.S. for six consecutive weeks this summer season. Season 2 adopted, holding its personal with three weeks within the prime 10 within the U.S.

When Season 3 arrived on Netflix Aug. 11, Sullivan’s Crossing reappeared alongside the streamer’s hottest titles globally and within the U.S., proving its impact on audiences was not a fluke.

The regular development in streaming curiosity and viewership has turned Sullivan’s Crossing into a novel case research of what can go proper when an older present grabs a brand new viewers.

“It has been very nice in that it has been this gradual build-out, whereas different reveals will are available in, Season 1 might be big after which [it] dies off in Seasons 2 and three,” collection star Kohan tells Yahoo. “This appears the other of that, which has been very affirming in how a lot folks resonate with these tales.”

A relatable escape from actuality

Sullivan’s Crossing followers have cited the present’s comparatively low stakes, predictability of the storylines and relatable characters as foremost the explanation why it’s prime for binge-watching. It’s additionally reliable, a signature of the comfortable, consolation TV the present is usually described as.

“Issues can occur to [the characters], however you’re fairly certain you’re not going to get Sport of Thrones or Ned Stark-ed,” Megan Vick, freelance author and Tv Critics Affiliation board member, tells Yahoo, referencing one of many largest plot twists in latest TV historical past when the presumed Sport of Thrones protagonist was dramatically killed off in Season 1, heightening the sense that nobody was protected. As an alternative, you go into it with the mindset of, “‘I’m going to spend 45 minutes with these people who find themselves likable and try to do their greatest.’ There is no such thing as a politics. It’s simply, ‘OK, how are we going to save lots of this campground? How are we going to deal with this subsequent medical emergency?’”

Alexa LaMalfa grew to become a fan of Sullivan’s Crossing earlier this yr. She was scrolling by way of Netflix, uninterested in what she had been watching, noticed that the present was new, and shortly binge-watched the primary two seasons in just a few days. Determined to know what occurred in Season 3, LaMalfa — who admits she’s an “absolute sucker for reveals like this,” itemizing Hart of Dixie and Virgin River as a few of her favorites — downloaded the CW app and watched the remainder of the episodes there.

“It represented household [and] neighborhood. It was comforting to look at the characters work together in the best way that they did,” LaMalfa tells Yahoo. “I feel that’s what actually drew me to maintain watching as a result of it didn’t appear faux to me, like I used to be sitting [on a couch] watching TV. It was like I used to be going to Sullivan’s Crossing.”

The truth that the characters didn’t lead extraordinary lives additionally made it simpler to digest, she says. “They’ve regular jobs, and that’s relatable to an viewers. You may simply bounce in and really feel such as you’re a part of it.”

Kaitlin Kemp, a 33-year-old filmmaker primarily based in New York Metropolis, who was on the lookout for one thing to look at “to assist me get off my cellphone and decompress,” was bought by the “serene-looking panorama.”

What she didn’t account for was how invested she would grow to be. “My stress ranges jumped the second the present began,” Kemp tells Yahoo.

The Virgin River enhance

Sullivan’s Crossing holds a lot of the identical DNA as Netflix’s longest-running scripted collection, Virgin River. Each are romantic dramas impressed by novels written by Carr, who has a big, engaged fan base. And each are now streaming hits for Netflix.

Vick credit Virgin River’s sustained success as a key issue fueling Sullivan’s Crossing’s present uptick in streams.

“There’s a really giant viewers for Virgin River. So once you’re on the lookout for reveals like Virgin River [on Netflix], Sullivan’s Crossing is an computerized win,” Vick says.

“The pipeline from Virgin River to Sullivan’s Crossing may be very simple,” she continues. “Netflix [has] the algorithm, in order that they know in case you’ve watched Virgin River to place this in your ‘We predict you need to watch this’ queue, and that’s the way it takes off. It’s such an natural match for Virgin River that it makes good sense that Netflix would feed it to these followers.”

Sullivan’s Crossing creator Roma Roth, who was an government producer on Virgin River, set her “sights excessive” with the objective of matching the Netflix collection’s recognition with that components in thoughts. “We had all of the constructing blocks between all of these components to create successful present,” Roth tells Yahoo.

“Giving folks lifelike characters on identifiable journeys that they join with” is the premise for Sullivan’s Crossing, Roth says, “as a result of we reside on this world the place we’re speaking by way of screens and we’re not connecting emotionally with one another.”

The present represents “this world that we’d all possibly like in the future to reside in,” Roth says. “If we stroll out of our backyards and we stroll into Sullivan’s Crossing, you give them that neighborhood that they’re lacking, the assist they’re lacking of their actual lives and permit them to precise their feelings by way of a 3rd occasion, which is the character that they’re occurring this journey with.”

‘A contemporary-day cleaning soap opera’

Sullivan’s Crossing might comply with a components, nevertheless it additionally isn’t afraid to throw the occasional curveball and craft memorable cliffhangers to maintain folks on their toes. In any case, it is tv.

“What I like most about Sullivan’s Crossing is how unpredictable it’s,” Kemp says, who describes it as “a modern-day cleaning soap opera” that she will be able to’t fairly stop. “You actually by no means know the place the writers are going to take the story or how lengthy it’s a must to meet a personality earlier than they die or come near loss of life… And the cliffhangers are actually unmatched.”

A mind tumor makes a beloved character face her mortality, Sully’s guilt over an accident he brought on leads him to tackle the monetary burden of elevating a toddler, and Maggie’s shock being pregnant on the finish of Season 2 are just some examples of the acquainted conflicts which have plagued the characters.

LaMalfa agrees, referencing the dramatic diner fireplace within the Season 2 finale — through which Sully’s destiny was left unanswered after he raced into the fireplace to rescue these trapped — as an emotional game-changer. “The stakes have been low after which one thing like that occurred; it simply introduced every thing from level A to level B,” she says. “Issues bought extra intense after which [I] bought 10 instances extra invested.”

“Any good present goes to attract your viewers in. And if it’s too simple of a watch, you would possibly get uninterested in the present otherwise you may be making your self a sandwich, which you don’t need. You need to maintain the viewers’s consideration,” Roth says. The showrunner scours social media to trace fan responses to storyline beats and character developments. “In a drama, it’s a must to pack issues in them in a extra dramatic method and take some artistic license. We need to take folks on a enjoyable journey… in a method that’s bingeable.”

That technique has labored in spades. Now, with Season 4 again in manufacturing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, there might be much more drama in retailer with the arrival of Maggie’s secret husband complicating her romance with Cal.

“Season 4 is all about metamorphosis and transition,” Roth says.