If you’ve been
reading my book reviews on this site, you might know that back in May of 2022 I
reviewed Lianne Moriarty’s most recent novel Apples Never Fall. (Looking
at the first draft I repeatedly referred to it as Apples Must Fall; I
do hope I corrected it when I finally published it.)
In it I gave a
summary of my following of Moriarty’s work which, like most of the rest of the
world, had exploded with the HBO adaptation of Big Little Lies in 2017.
I said that I had read every one of her books that she had written both before
and after that, and that I could appreciate the difference between her version
and the American adaptations of both Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers.
Apparently, I also liked the Hulu adaptation of it better than many of my colleagues. And while I wish I could
boast, it probably wouldn’t have taken a genius to see that Apples would
have been adapted into a limited series itself down the road. I was accurate
that I didn’t think that it would have a role for Nicole Kidman in it, and I
was right.
After much
anticipation and several delays due to the strike in Hollywood the limited
series version of Apples Never Fall dropped on Peacock this week. I have
only watched the first two episodes so far but from what I see the basic
structure is fundamentally the same with the novel having been moved to Miami.
I am intimately familiar with both how the book plays out and how it ends. For
the benefit of those of you who haven’t read the book, I will proceed with
caution and just deal with the first two episodes.
The structure of
the adaptation, for the record, seems to be following more faithfully then most
adaptions of any major literary work. The first shot of Apples is of Joy
Delaney riding her bike, making a stop to buy apples and then us cutting to the
sight of the wreckage of her bike. We then spent the rest of the episode
following the story between two time periods ‘then’ and ‘now’ The episodes seem
to follow the structure that the story will be told from the perspective of
various family members: the first episode was called ‘The Delaneys’ and served
as an introduction, the second unfolded from the perspective of Logan and so
on.
The adaptation,
like the novel, starts with the retirement of Joy and Stan Delaney. In the
original novel both Stan and Joy were in their early seventies when they
retired. In the Peacock version they are a decade younger and their children
are slightly younger as well. The character of Joy was no doubt pushed as the
most prominent in the ads because she is played by that brilliant actress
Annette Bening. In fact, we mostly see Joy through flashbacks and she seems to
be a supporting character more than a lead. This is keeping in with the spirit
of the novel: Joy was missing so every character only saw her in the past. Because
Apples is not so much about Joy and Stan but how their children saw
their parents when a crisis came, this is the right call.
Bening, like
almost every actress who is called in for a Moriarty adaptation, is one of the
greatest in her profession. It has taken some time for Bening, who has been
continuing with her film career even while so many of her fellow actresses have
found better roles on the small screen, to be lured to the limited series where
Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon as well as Jessica Lange and, well,
basically all the women in the just completed Capote Vs. The Swans have
been doing magnificent work. Now, just months after her NYAD co-star Jodie
Foster made her return to TV in Night Country Bening has returned to TV
for her first time in nearly twenty years.
You can’t imagine
any of the actresses in Big Little Lies playing Joy, not even Meryl
Streep. Bening is far closer in the actual age of Joy (63, something that her
own daughter doesn’t seem to know) and she still has the grace of the former
tennis player she once was. Bening has been playing flawed maternal figures
since American Beauty and does it seamlessly. In a lunch not long after
the sale of the tennis school that precipitates most of the action in the
series we see Joy trying to put up the front of the perfect mother and wife in
front of her family, and it’s clear even now the cracks are beneath the
surface. In the ‘then’ flashes we see Joy admitting to her children, much to
their chagrin, that she felt she was taken for granted much of their childhood
and didn’t like cooking and cleaning. That Joy is missing for several days
before any of her children take action is not a shock; you get the feeling that
Joy has been something whose presence her children have noted until she wasn’t
there anymore.
Apples Never Fall plays like it is a
mystery, much the same way that Big Little Lies opened. There was a
suspicious death and we spent the entire series, leading up to know not only
who was killed and by who but why. Apples takes the same measures in its
first two episodes but there has already been a certain amount of
disappointment by some critics who find that the ending is an anticlimax. If
the series is similar to the novel in that way (and it may not be, I’ve only
seen the first two episodes) I can guess why many people would think that way.
Watching the end of ‘Logan’, we get the increasing suspicion that there is
something darker going on beneath the surface and that Stan is capable of doing
what their children can’t imagine.
Without giving
anything away, this was the design of Moriarty’s novel as well. Apples Never
Fall uses the disappearance of Joy to lay bare the cracks in the foundation
of the Delaney family, which was considered perfection. This is keeping with
the real story behind the first season of Big Little Lies (and the
second as well). In this case, however, the children are much older then those
of the Monterrey Five and the scars much more visible. This is actually an
advantage over the latter series as we can now truly see how deep the scars
are.
Troy is played by
Jake Lacy who ever since he broke big on the first season of The White Lotus
has become famous for playing characters who are generally loathsome. Troy
is a venture capitalist who is going through a problem with his divorce that we
don’t understand yet. Initially nice, there’s a nasty side to him that comes
out very quickly but in this case it may be because he knows of the illusions
of the Delaney’s imperfections more than the rest of them.
Logan is played by
Conor Merrigan Turner. In the book he was a dissatisfied college instructor, in
the series he’s running a marina. In both of them he is dealing with the
fallout of the end of a relationship with his longtime lover Indira. Logan
seems very much like a man-child.
Brooke is played by
Essie Randles, like her model in the book, a physical therapist who is struggling
to make ends meet. She is involved with a lesbian partner (I don’t remember if
this is true in the book) but like in that volume her marriage is clearly
struggling.
Amy is the oldest
and by far the biggest mess. In a sense
the revelation in this series is Alison Brie. Her professional career on TV has
always been marked by playing either working professionals (Community)
or professionals whose career is flawed (GLOW) Even when she plays wives,
as she did as Trudy Campbell on Mad Men, her characters always seem more
solid and grounded. Amy is a complete mess who falls apart the fastest when Joy
goes missing. She has spent her entire life trying to find her own path and she
has never truly found it. When we first see her room in her apartment, it’s a
complete mess and she’s royally angry when her roommate cleans and organizes
it. “I have a system,” she insists. Amy is more fragile then the rest of her
siblings, unwilling to pick a side in the ecosystem that is her family. Brie’s
work among the siblings is the most deserving of an Emmy nomination.
Much of the burden
of the series falls about Stan, played
by that brilliant character actor Sam Neill. The world was immensely
saddened to learn of Neill’s battles with blood cancer and he admits he doesn’t
know how much longer he is for this world. It is hard to compare that with his
work as the Delaney patriarch where he seems full of life and energy, striding
across the tennis court as if he were a matador about to kill a bull, brash in
front of his children and arrogant about his behavior in how he frequently talks
down to them and insults them as affection. I’ve read the novel so I know many
of the truths about Stan that you may not, but watching Neill’s work in the
first two episodes even knowing that I still felt the same doubt his children
might – and that the viewers might too.
There is also
another character floating about – Savannah, a mysterious woman who shows up on
the Delaney’s porch one night and assimilates herself in the parent’s lives
even though the children are suspicious of her. Even now they are not divided –
Logan clearly thinks she’s suspicious but Troy is dismissive – too dismissive,
you might say. They are right that Savannah is keeping secrets and that she is
not to be trusted - but since I don’t
know how faithful they will be to the novel, I will remain numb.
There is more to Apples
then this, of course. There is an investigation that unfolds (admittedly by
a police force that seems more competent than the one in the book) There is the
story of a tennis pro who was once the Delaney’s student who they lost for
reasons we do not know. And there are secrets that Stan is hiding – secrets all
the Delaney’s have been hiding for years.
How much of a hold
Apples Never Fall will have on the viewer may very well rest on your ultimate
expectations. The acting is generally superb as is the writing, but in the Golden
Age of Limited Series that’s par for the course. If you’re looking for the kind
of thriller you got from The Undoing (where David E. Kelley’s adaptation
bore almost no resemblance to the novel) you will be disappointed. If
you’re looking more for the kind of dysfunctional family angst you get from,
say, Little Fires Everywhere or Tiny Beautiful Things, I suspect
you will be more satisfied. I will give a final evaluation of Apples when
I finish the series, both to assess its quality and to compare with the
original novel. For now, I’ll just say this: if nothing else, my subscription to
Peacock was worth getting just I could see it.
My score: 4 stars.
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