In the opening scene of Little Fires Everywhere, we are presented with a mystery: someone has burned down Elena Richardson’s house, and no one knows who. But as you get to know her as a character, you can’t help but question why no one did it the minute they met her.
This miniseries, adapted from Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel, was released onto Hulu and Amazon Prime in March of this year, and centres around two mothers at war in a cookie-cutter, picture-perfect suburban American neighbourhood. In the red corner, we have Reese Witherspoon as the unbelievably irritating Elena, complete with colour coordinated family planner and sex schedule with her husband (only on Wednesdays and Saturdays). Opposite her in the blue corner is free-spirited artist Mia (played by Kerry Washington), who moves to the area with her young daughter Pearl (Lexi Underwood), haunted by something in her past.
Ever the do-gooder, Elena offers the pair a house at discounted rent (after previously calling the police on them, but let’s gloss over that bit), and from there, the two families’ lives become increasingly intertwined. The glossy exterior of the Richardson family falls away, and all sorts of buried secrets come tumbling out – from false identities to romance and questions of parenting.
At the heart of this show is motherhood, and the ways in which both characters strive to do the best for their children at any cost. Ironically, it was neither of the protagonists that left me with a lasting impression; instead, it was Underwood’s frustrated and naïve Pearl that stole the show. The scenes between her and her mother are fuelled with anger, and yet raw and moving – but unfortunately, they were in the minority.
Elena is ultimately a caricature: it is impossible to believe that someone so blind to social injustice and other people’s feelings would make a successful journalist, as well as somehow still have a husband (played by Joshua Jackson). She is reminiscent of Witherspoon’s character Madeline in Big Little Lies, except stripped of any redeemable qualities, which unfortunately means that it’s impossible for a viewer to feel any empathy. By the final episode, I was ready to burn down her mansion myself.
Kerry Washington, on the other hand, gives a great and far more emotionally complex performance as Mia, but this is slightly undercut by one very specific facial expression which she does far too often. It’s not quite a smile and not quite a snarl, but whatever it is, it had me shouting at my laptop (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen it).
Little Fires is set in the late 1990s, and there is some attempt made to expose some of the prejudices and racism of the time (the implications of Elena hiring Mia as a ‘house manager’, for example). However, the handling is not exactly the most delicate at times – the dinner table scenes in the Richardson household feel more like vessels for political opinion than they do authentic conversation. And that’s the key thing with the show itself: it’s all a little overdone. Elena’s tone-deaf remarks wear incredibly thin, the title of the series is said explicitly during the first five minutes of episode 1, and there’s a moment where Mia adds Ritz crackers to a meatloaf. Need I say more?
The younger cast members give good performances, and there are enough twists to keep you engaged if you haven’t read the book, but ironically, what this show is missing is that spark.