No, Netflix’s New Series ‘Untamed’ Isn’t A Glennon Doyle Adaptation (But We Wish It Was)

It takes a lot to get me excited about an e-mail these days, and even if I wasn’t an entertainment writer, Netflix announcements would still be one of the few exceptions to the rule. So when I was fooled by a subject line today “Coming Thursday, July 17th… UNTAMED”, my mind immediately jumped to the thought “OMG!! GLENNON DOYLE IS GETTING A NETFLIX SERIES”.

Not-so-spoiler-alert (because it’s in the headline), she is not. Despite being flagged for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club (a tried and true pathway for book to TV adaptations) a month after the book was published in 2020, we still don’t have live action version of Doyle’s #1 NYT best-seller, Untamed.

The miniseries premiering on Netflix this Thursday (July 17) is a drama/murder mystery set in Yosemite National Park starring Eric Bana (who we will always love for his role as Hector in Troy) and Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill. Created by Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote The Revenant, this should be a promising combination of talent from our favorite streaming service.

But is it as exciting as a writer falling in love with a professional soccer player?

No. The answer is a resounding negative. Doyle’s memoir documenting her experience falling in love with now-wife, Abby Wambach, while she was still married to ex-husband, Craig Melton, in the middle of a tour to promote the book she wrote about saving their marriage after infidelity is just better than anything you’ll get out of pure fiction and a Hollywood writer’s room.

It was raw, thoughtful, and put into words the overwhelming experience of exploring unknown parts of your sexuality later on in adulthood. Most importantly, it had incredibly relatable takeaways for a wide audience, regardless of whether you’d been in a similar situation or not. There were learnings about authenticity and agency and female empowerment that just caught like wildfire.

The good news is Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television studios scooped up the rights to ~this~ Untamed back in 2020 when the book first came out, LGBTQ icon Sarah Paulson has been cast to play Doyle, and Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff is handling the adaptation. The bad news is that we’re still waiting for more concrete production updates, or even a tentative premiere date.

We will just have to keep our fingers crossed, and our Google alerts set for this one, but until then, just be careful getting your hopes up from an e-mail subject line.

You can watch Netflix’s Untamed when it debuts this Thursday, and check out the official trailer below: