Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Under The Vines’ Season 3 On Acorn TV, Where Daisy And Louis Deal With Someone Who Claims To Own Half Their Vineyard

Shows like Under The Vines are more about character and vibe than plot. We want to hang out with the people in and around the Oakley Vineyards in the beautiful countryside on New Zealand, which is why the show succeeded in its first two seasons. But at the end of Season 2, a stranger came around claiming to own half the vineyard. Can he be incorporated into the show’s cast without disrupting the vibe?

UNDER THE VINES SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: After we are given a recap of Season 2, we see shots of the Oakley Vineyards in the early morning. Everyone living at the house is woken up by a man singing a sea shanty.

The Gist: The people being woken up are the vineyard’s co-owners, Daisy Munroe (Rebecca Gibney) and Louis Oakley (Charles Edwards), along with Tippy (Trae Te Wiki), the vineyard’s very pregnant vintner. The person singing the shanty is William (Mark Mitchinson), who has been living at the house since he came by six months prior and claimed that the vineyard’s late owner, Stanley Oakley, promised him half of the property after a night of drinking. His evidence? A promise scrawled on a bar menu.

Daisy and Louis dispute the claim, and the parties are about to have the dispute settled in front of a mediator. Louis, a former lawyer who was disbarred in London, feels they have an airtight case, but William is extremely confident, so much so that he’s making plans to build a new cellar door, aka a tasting room, for the vineyard, even though they already have one.

But William isn’t the only issue they are dealing with. Daisy is planning her wedding with David (Kirk Torrance), who has some definitive ideas about what venue they should use. Tippy has kept her pregnancy quiet, despite the fact that she’s obviously showing, and Daisy and Louis have no idea how to bring up the topic with her. Daisy is also wondering why Nic (Carrie Green) and Vic (Cohen Holloway) are avoiding her, despite the couple saying that Daisy and Louis were the “heart parents” to the twins Nic is carrying.

At the vineyard next door, Don (Jon Bach), after a night hearing William talk about his world travels, tells his wife Marissa (Sarah Perise) that he’s ready for them to retire and see the world. Marissa, though, isn’t ready; she had just gotten done offering to run the neighboring vineyard owned by Hilary (Catherine Wilkin), whose blindness is getting worse.

Beloved handyman Gus (Simon Mead) is in Los Angeles, living with Daisy’s actor friend Griff (Dean O’Gorman), but he unexpectedly comes back to the vineyard with bad news about their relationship. But he’s there to support Daisy and Louis in their case against William. As confident as Louis feels, though, William knows he has something up his sleeve that will make his case much stronger.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? During Season 2 of Under The Vines, we compared the show to Northern Exposure, and we’ll stick with that comparison.

Our Take: After Season 2 of Under The Vines, it felt that the show’s creator, Erin White, and her writing staff was trying to figure out where to go with the character-based light drama. Louis and Daisy had settled in at the picturesque winery in New Zealand, and they put their feelings for each other on hold. So if there was no conflict or tension between the two of them, where would it come from? From the outside, of course; it came in the form of William, who claims that he owned half the winery. We’re just not sure if that was the best direction for White and company to take the show.

It’s not like William as a character is the show’s “bad guy”; it’s just that his personality and his ideas don’t mesh with Daisy and Louis’. But the question of his ownership seems to be settled by the end of the first episode, leaving the three of them having to work together. But it also means that the main push of this season is the three of them struggling to run the vineyard together, which is going to take a deft writing touch to not get repetitive and annoying. Perhaps adding some depth to William, instead of making him simply a retired raconteur, will help.

But the beauty of a show like Under The Vines is the stories that the supporting characters get, and all of them have gone in interesting directions. Let’s hope that they all play out during this season as they have in the first two.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: In a positive development, a local cop named Yvonne (Amanda Billing), who has invited Louis to her house for some legal advice, realizes he’s not taking her hints and she makes the first move. Louis, pleasantly surprised, returns the favor.

Sleeper Star: We love how no-nonsense Trae Te Wiki’s character Tippy is, and her reactions to Daisy and Louis’ fumbling attempts at discussing her pregnancy are priceless.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Daisy describes David’s chosen venue as very Game Of Thrones, David says he though the show was mostly about “boobs and dragons.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Under The Vines is still a fun, easygoing watch. We just hope that bringing in an outsider to disrupt things doesn’t send the show in a bad direction.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.