Big Little Lies Review

The first season is close to ideal limited television. The murder framing keeps a story about primary school politics taut, Vallée shoots the California coast as something beautiful and threatening, and the fragmentary flash cuts, waves and windows and half remembered moments, do the psychological work that dialogue would ruin. Nicole Kidman gives the performance of her television career as a woman managing a violent marriage with a project manager's competence, and Alexander Skarsgard is terrifying precisely because he is charming and remorseful between episodes.

Laura Dern is very funny and Shailene Woodley carries the hardest material. The second season is the problem. It exists because the first was a hit, it strains to find new tension in the aftermath, and it spends its run on a custody battle. Meryl Streep is superb in it and the season around her is thin. The reported dispute in which its new director's cut was substantially reworked in the edit is visible on screen. One great season and a coda.