‘Little Disasters’ Review: Diane Kruger Leads a Paramount+ Whodunit That Runs Out of Steam

Suspicions of Paramount’s corporate ideological leanings are unlikely to be abated by : The new limited series boasts one of the most demonstrably anti-vax screen protagonists in recent memory, folding distrust of the medical establishment into a bigger conversation about how it’s bad to be judgmental of other people’s parenting styles. To be fair, Little Disasters is never really a political treatise of any kind, and for at least three of six episodes, the show’s pragmatism when it comes to the main characters’ imperfections is interesting and even entertaining. Still, by the fifth and sixth episodes, which turn several key figures into villainous caricatures and resolve the season-long mystery in cartoonishly unconvincing fashion, I was pondering what, if anything, the show was trying to say. The conclusion I came to was: “Nothing particularly perceptive.” Related Stories Little Disasters The Bottom Line Intriguing build-up, flat follow-through. Airdate: Thursday, December 11 (Paramount+)Cast: Diane Kruger, Jo Joyner, Shelley Conn, Emily Taaffe and JJ FieldAdapted By: Ruth Fowler and Amanda Duke Still, this will probably appeal to some viewers who have flocked to thematically and titularly similar shows, in which the diminutive “little” was applied to such things as lies that are actually big and fires that are actually everywhere. Adapted by Ruth Fowler and Amanda Duke from the book by Sarah Vaughan, the series is focused on an octet of friends who met as part of a parenting class — “antenatal” in the charming British parlance — and became close over a decade. There are shades of Netflix’s The Four Seasons in the sense of “Wait, don’t these people have any friends they DIDN’T meet in this random group 10 years ago?” But don’t worry about that. These three couples have dinners together, take vacations together, parent on the sidelines of their kids’ soccer leagues together, etc. The relationships, already put to the test by a particularly suspenseful week in Provence the previous year, are pushed to the brink when Jess () arrives in the emergency room — or “Accident & Emergency” in the charming British parlance — with her 10-month-old daughter Betsy. Betsy won’t stop crying and Jess is freaking out, getting more harried when the doctor on duty turns out to be Liz (Jo Joyner), another member of the antenatal friend circle. Liz finds that Betsy has a skull fracture that doesn’t line up with Jess’ story about the night in question, and additional oddities pop up, leaving Liz with a choice: call child services or take her friend at her word. When she opts for the former, tensions grow, especially in the friendship between the two women. Jess’ shifting story is just one of several strange details, including the question of where husband Ed (JJ Feild), a gruff and burly finance something-or-other, is and why Jess hasn’t contacted him at all. That all forces a grand revelation to occur at the birthday party for Jess’ middle kid, Frankie (Jax James), who everybody theorizes is on the spectrum — but nobody would know because Jess only believes in medical treatment under certain extreme circumstances. As the police and social services investigate, all the members of the friend group become involved, including Charlotte (Shelley Conn), a type-A lawyer married to innocuously bland Andrew (Patrick Baladi) in general economic comfort, and quirky Mel (Emily Taaffe), who lives with unemployed partner Rob (Stephen Campbell Moore) in less economic comfort. I guess I could mention that Liz’s husband is Nick (Ben Bailey Smith), but the show sometimes forgets he exists, though he seems nice. “Seems” is the key word, not as it relates necessarily just to Nick, but to the entire group. The show is about how you should never assume you know anybody or anything based on first or even second impressions. Charlotte, Liz and Mel get to speak directly to the camera, an inconsistently useful device that lets them opine, over and over again, things like “I forgot that perfection is an illusion, something created, filtered and tweaked. And then something happens, some tiny mishap, some little disaster.” Jess looks, on the surface, like a perfect mother, the mother whose attentiveness makes the other mothers feel insecure and judged — with the series reminding us over and over again that these flash judgments are often incorrect, and that nobody is judged incorrectly more often than mothers. “Every mother faces constant judgement,” a character observes. “The way we parent. The choices we make. The routines we cling to. Everyone expects us to get it right all of the time. But we’re human. We falter. We make mistakes.” For a long time, the show wants to keep viewers in a state of unease regarding what happened to Betsy. Did Jess do something bad to her? Did Ed, who seems to have quite the temper, do something bad? Did one of the kids? Did an outside party? Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? By design, the scripts are constantly offering misdirections and suggesting that the show you think you’re watching isn’t quite the show that’s going to materialize; the results vacillate between standard multi-domestic melodrama and whodunit. Eva Siguroardottir, who directed all six episodes, adds to the uncertainty by creating moments of extended alienation for several characters via recurring disorientation or straight-up hallucination, often with the unsettling tones of a wailing baby in the background. Little Disasters doesn’t reach quite the extremes of the film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, but the anxiety is similar: We expect mothers to achieve a level of perfection, but if we saw the reality or what’s in the heads of many of them, we’d be either horrified or reassured. Perhaps both. The series treats Jess’ anti-vax tendencies as one of those things that some outsiders will judge negatively and others will find comforting — indistinguishable, in that sense, from other parenting choices. This will go over great for viewers who think vaccinations are a personal health choice and not so great for others who think they’re a community health issue; while there’s one scene in which Liz, being a doctor and all, tries to tell Jess that, like, vaccinations are good, Jess insists she’s making an informed decision and the show is totally happy to leave it at that (just like the show is totally happy to accept that Jess and Ed have no interest in getting Frankie diagnosed with anything or figuring out how to better understand his needs). But see, here I am being judgmental, and Little Disasters makes it clear that I’m wrong for that, so no need to send me angry emails! I know! Little Disasters is on safer footing when it turns the table on our expectations regarding the show’s main couples, unearthing toxicity in superficially affectionate relationships and affection in relationships that appear volatile — and sometimes forcing whiplash by confirming those initial assumptions. When it hovers in uncertain places, Little Disasters works well, but it ultimately sells out most of that ambiguity with a finale that, on levels both legal and moral, I didn’t buy for a second. There’s probably a way of doing an ending that simultaneously is conclusive and reminds us that every time we thought we understood the truth about anything here we were wrong, so we might be wrong in the end, too. That’s not, unfortunately, how the show chooses to go. The show also tries, with less success, to illustrate the economic context behind the choices. Two of the couples are clearly rich, one with both spouses working. One couple is mostly comfortable, but only because of the exhausting grind of their jobs. And one couple has economic struggles that produce desperate decisions, but more than a few viewers are likely to think “If struggle means leaving in a cheery, if slightly cramped, London home, my ability to relate is limited.” There are no haves and have-nots here, just haves and have-mores. The cast is sturdy, even when writing decisions leave several characters in places I found uninteresting. Kruger builds a sense of stressed discomfort and uses flashback scenes effectively to show the gap between settled and frazzled versions of Jess. She’s scary and sympathetic. Joyner, whose character is given the acting gift and real-life curse of a drinking problem, shows a fundamentally decent woman with demons that go largely unexplored. She’s capable, but damaged. Taaffe and Baladi have simple arcs — Mel looks happy-go-lucky and turns out not to be, while Andrew looks stuffy and out of touch with the group and has different layers — but often get thwarted by the contrivances of the home stretch. I admit that I jumped to at least two or three wrong conclusions throughout Little Disasters, falling perfectly into designed traps about judgment and the limitations of perspective. That actually made the hollowness of the ending and the superficiality of some of its underlying ideology more frustrating.

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