TV Review - Nine Perfect Strangers

Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies was a best-selling novel that was adapted into a very successful, culturally relevant, HBO series that won a ton of Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series. That kind of success pushed HBO to give Big Little Lies a second season, despite its intention to be only one season. That success also guaranteed that another of her books would get adapted into a series. David E. Kelley returns as the head writer. Kelley was the sole credited writer for Big Little Lies. Here, however, he shares writing credits with John-Henry Butterworth (Ford v. Ferrari and Edge of Tomorrow). Kelley is of course a great writer and Butterworth has worked on projects that I've enjoyed, but I'm not sure that even they can jazz up this material, particularly because of how it's structured.

Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies and The Undoing) stars as Masha Dmitrichenko, a Russian businesswoman who was a corporate CEO. One night, she was shot in a parking garage and left for dead. An Asian paramedic named Yao, played by Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), saved her and from that point, she has dedicated herself to changing people's lives, enlightening them, as she believes she's been enlightened. To that fact, she's established a wellness center deep in the woods somewhere in northern California. She then gathers people for a 10-day retreat where she will challenge and counsel them through whatever issues are plaguing them.

Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Bridesmaids) co-stars as Frances Welty, a novelist struggling with both her professional life and personal life. Her next book seems as though it's been rejected. Her relationship with a man appears to have been a scam that robbed her of money. She doesn't know if she'll have a career and she worries that she'll be lonely. McCarthy played an aging and childless writer in Can You Ever Forgive Me? and that character was a million times more interesting than her character here. So far, this series seems less interested in analyzing her writing and drilling down why it might be rejected or commenting at all on the publishing industry, as Can You Ever Forgive Me? did. Yes, she's lonely, but if this is all about her finding a man in what's essentially rehab, then that's lame.

Bobby Cannavale plays Tony Hogburn, a former NFL player who's now a drug addict after suffering a horrible injury on the field. I'm not really interested much in this character either. Addiction is now a commonly explored topic. It's understandable, given that we're still very much in the midst of an opioid epidemic, but there's nothing here that's all that engaging. What doesn't really help is that this is the third project in the span of less than a year where Cannavale has worked with McCarthy and the second where he's played her love interest. Their film Superintelligence (2020) wasn't great but it gave them more to make me believe that they could fall in love than what's presented here. Cannavale does deliver a monologue in Episode 6 that is romantic and heartbreaking. He and McCarthy are funny together, but it's still not enough here.

It's also funny because a couple of years ago, Cannavale did a series that had some parallels to this. It was Amazon's Homecoming (2018). Without spoiling either series, both have some commonalities in their premise and narrative, but Homecoming is a vastly more intriguing, more thrilling and more compelling series than this one. This series feels incredibly dull by comparison.

Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast and Fast & Furious 6) plays Lars Lee, a reporter who is gay and who is having problems with his boyfriend. Lars' boyfriend wants to have a baby and Lars doesn't. However, this series hasn't included Lars' boyfriend or partner. He's a bit of the odd man out because everyone else has their partner with them or is dealing with other issues that are unrelated to anything romantic. There was one moment in the fifth episode where Lars describes having a dream where he was pregnant with Tony as the father of his baby, which maybe illuminates a hidden desire in Lars that he was denying, but he feels more isolated than the other characters, so it goes nowhere.

Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals and Revolutionary Road) also co-stars as Napoleon Marconi, a high school teacher who is dealing with the death of his son. Grieving parents is a commonly explored topic too, but Shannon is given some interesting moments to play that make him engaging. He has a fantastic scene in the first episode in the hot tub. Napoleon gets a fantastic monologue in the third episode and Shannon delivers it incredibly. He even gets a funny scene in the fifth episode where he's shirtless and dancing in his underwear. Assuming that the characters are all coming to a head, I'm more curious to see what Napoleon does, mostly due to Shannon's performance.

There are other characters and other plot lines, but none of them feel consequential. Tiffany Boone (The Chi and The Following) plays Delilah. Manny Jacinto (The Good Place and Brand New Cherry Flavor) plays Yao. Both Delilah and Yao work for Masha. It's also revealed that both are having sex with Masha. I don't understand the point of it. It's probably setting up something down the road, but nothing about it made me care, even though Jacinto is incredibly sexy.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 8 eps.

Available on Hulu.