Where her third-person narration drifts above the action, the Hulu version heightens the melancholic tone to melodramatic proportions, twisting storylines like one involving Lexie’s college essay until their racial overtones become glaring. risk, of race, class and sexuality-in the story to an extent that the novel never reads like a polemic. As a book, Little Fires Everywhere isn’t hard to read or even interpret, but Ng (a producer of the miniseries) submerges its themes-of mothers and daughters, of safety vs. The show follows the broad outline of the novel, at a brisk but not hectic pace that makes it easy to keep watching. Both the show’s title-which is spoken early in the premiere-and a cold open that flashes forward to a fire at the Richardsons’ house suggest that it’s these combustible relationships that eventually ignite. Meanwhile, youngest Richardson Izzy (Megan Stott), the gothy, bullied black sheep of the family, finds a kindred spirit in Mia. After learning Mia is working at a Chinese joint, Elena hires her as a part-time “house manager,” to cook and clean. And it’s where Pearl gets her first taste of comfortable suburban life, whose quotidian routines she clearly craves. That’s where she meets his jock older brother Trip (Jordan Elsass) and the Richardsons’ popular, high-achieving eldest child Lexie, quickly becoming infatuated by him and awestruck by her. Quiet sophomore Moody Richardson (Gavin Lewis), Pearl’s classmate, develops a crush on her and starts bringing her home to hang out after school. The connection between the families deepens but complexifies as their children become friends. While Elena, a longtime reporter for the local paper, and her lawyer husband, Bill (Joshua Jackson), embody the town’s ethos of organization and predictability, Mia travels the country making art and working menial jobs. Their new tenants in a smaller home that Elena inherited from her parents and rents out at below market rate to deserving paupers are single, black mom Mia Warren ( Kerry Washington, also an executive producer) and her 15-year-old daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood of Family Reunion). The Richardsons are white and upper-middle-class, with an enormous house, four kids in high school and deep roots in Shaker, where Witherspoon’s Elena, the matriarch, grew up. Set in 1997 in Ng’s hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio-a wealthy Cleveland suburb where, she writes, “the underlying philosophy that everything could-and should-be planned out, and that by doing so you could avoid the unseemly, the unpleasant and the disastrous”-the story coalesces around two polar-opposite families. ![]() And taken together with the disappointing Morning Show, it reveals some of the limitations of her star-studded approach. ![]() ![]() Like its predecessors, the miniseries both stars Witherspoon and counts her among its executive producers. Premiering with three episodes on March 18 (each of the five remaining installments will appear on subsequent Wednesdays), Little Fires Everywhere brings Celeste Ng’s celebrated 2017 novel to the small screen. Also on Hello Sunshine’s docket is an adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s rock ’n’ roll page-turner Daisy Jones & The Six, with Riley Keough in the title role, for Amazon Prime Video.īut first, Hulu gets a turn. With Brian Stelter’s nonfiction best-seller Top of the Morning as source material, 2019’s The Morning Show stars Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston as co-anchors-and debuted as the marquee offering from Apple TV+. HBO’s Big Little Lies set the template, casting Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Lauren Dern and Zoë Kravitz as Monterey moms ( plus Meryl Streep as a terrifying mother-in-law in Season 2) in a hit drama based on Liane Moriarty’s novel. The future of prestige TV may be unwritten, but if the present is any indication, it will involve a lot of high-profile, female-fronted book adaptations from Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine.
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