"The Waterfront," a new Netflix series about a family-run fishery off the North Carolina coast, officially stems from "Dawson's Creek" and "Scream" scribe Kevin Williamson, but given the first season's shallow interest in its own characters,

Williamson, an architect of the Scream franchise who also created the CW's The Vampire Diaries and Fox's The Following, assembled an impressive lineup of familiar faces and rising talent for the eight-episode series, his first since 2018's Tell Me a Story.