Series review: 'Big Little Lies' highlights the dark side of the suburban dream

10 March 2017 - 15:55 By Andrea Nagel
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TV series 'Big Little Lies ', created and written by David E Kelley, probes the neurotic heart of California's suburbia.
TV series 'Big Little Lies ', created and written by David E Kelley, probes the neurotic heart of California's suburbia.
Image: HBO

As any mother of both the working and stay-at-home variety will tell you, there's enough drama going on at the school gate to write a miniseries.

That's just what TV writer David E Kelley, of Boston Legal and Ally McBeal fame, has done.

Using the talents of director Jean-Marc Vallée of Wild and Dallas Buyers Club, Kelley has created a nine-part series called Big Little Lies that delves into the lives of upper- and middle-class 40-year- olds and exposes their psychoses.

An all-star cast of Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern lifts the show from what could have been a cliched reimagining of Desperate Housewives, complete with prerequisite murder, to a nuanced psychological study of the elements of motherly and matrimonial behaviour.

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The lives of a group of families in northern California's Monterey intertwine by necessity because the children attend the same progressive elementary school.

Then there's the murder that happens at quiz night - but that's only alluded to by the nasty Greek chorus of peripheral parents as they're hauled into police questioning shamelessly eager to dish the dirt.

The show centres on Witherspoon's Madeline, a typically meddling, confrontational A-type (perfectionist) mom who is at once irritating, vulnerable and admirable for the stand she takes against the nastiness of some of the characters.

Kidman plays the elegantly beautiful former lawyer, Celeste, Madeline's best friend.

She's soft-spoken, sexy and married to a younger, highly successful businessman, who is played by Alexander Skarsgård. Together they live in a mansion with miles of seafront views.

Their overtly physical lovey-doveyness at first belies the darker nature of their relationship, but soon bruises blemish her perfect alabaster skin like cracks in their magnificent glass house.

Dern's highly strung tech hotshot Renata (she's just been named to the board of PayPal) is a foil for the two friends, who spend their mornings doing passive-aggressive yoga and flirting with the barista at the quaint harbour-side coffee shop.

Then there's the new mom, Jane, played by Shailene Woodley, whose arrival in town sets all the drama in motion.

There are fights at school drop-off, transparently obvious alcohol-dependency issues, the drawing of lines, the drawing in of husbands, and eventually there is a body that goes off a cliff.

Although the unravelling of privileged upper class (mostly white) angst set in House & Garden surrounds of exquisite extravagance may not be everyone's cup of tea, the ''lifestyle pornography", as it was dubbed by the New York Times, deserves your attention for at least one episode.

WATCH the trailer for Big Little Lies

 

• 'Big Little Lies  airs on M-Net (DStv channel 101) on Wednesdays at 8:30pm.

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