At first, it might appear that Amazon Prime Video’s Expats is another high-end mystery miniseries starring Nicole Kidman, along the lines of Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Undoing. While much of Expats does fit the mold of Kidman’s recent TV work, the six-episode series isn’t really about the crime at the center of its plot. Kidman’s Margaret is determined to find her missing son, but Expats is far less interested in solutions or answers, and anyone looking for a thriller full of clues and suspects will be disappointed. Based on the bestselling novel The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, Expats is more of a luxurious soap opera than a crime drama, and its meandering focus is one reason it ends up being a disappointment.Another reason is that Kidman has now played variations on this same fragile upper-class housewife several times, and she doesn’t bring a new approach to this particular character. Creator Lulu Wang, writer and director of the acclaimed 2019 movie The Farewell, also doesn’t give Kidman much more to work with than she’s had in similar previous prestige-TV roles, and the other characters are just as underwritten. Set in Hong Kong in 2014, Expats is languid and lumpy, seemingly all muddled middle without a definitive beginning or end.There’s no narrative or thematic advantage to withholding key plot points like this, especially since Expats is decidedly not a mystery story. The second episode clearly lays out the events that led to Gus’ disappearance, making the preceding hour more frustrating than intriguing. Wang continues with this disjointed approach as Expats progresses, with the interminable 97-minute fifth episode introducing major new subplots and supporting characters just as the story should be wrapping up. Wang could have created a more expansive drama that uses Lee’s novel as a jumping-off point, but that’s not what Expats is, and its copious detours just feel like dead ends.
At first, it might appear that Amazon Prime Video’s Expats is another high-end mystery miniseries starring Nicole Kidman, along the lines of Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Undoing. While much of Expats does fit the mold of Kidman’s recent TV work, the six-episode series isn’t really about the crime at the center of its plot. Kidman’s Margaret is determined to find her missing son, but Expats is far less interested in solutions or answers, and anyone looking for a thriller full of clues and suspects will be disappointed. Based on the bestselling novel The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, Expats is more of a luxurious soap opera than a crime drama, and its meandering focus is one reason it ends up being a disappointment.
Another reason is that Kidman has now played variations on this same fragile upper-class housewife several times, and she doesn’t bring a new approach to this particular character. Creator Lulu Wang, writer and director of the acclaimed 2019 movie The Farewell, also doesn’t give Kidman much more to work with than she’s had in similar previous prestige-TV roles, and the other characters are just as underwritten. Set in Hong Kong in 2014, Expats is languid and lumpy, seemingly all muddled middle without a definitive beginning or end.
There’s no narrative or thematic advantage to withholding key plot points like this, especially since Expats is decidedly not a mystery story. The second episode clearly lays out the events that led to Gus’ disappearance, making the preceding hour more frustrating than intriguing. Wang continues with this disjointed approach as Expats progresses, with the interminable 97-minute fifth episode introducing major new subplots and supporting characters just as the story should be wrapping up. Wang could have created a more expansive drama that uses Lee’s novel as a jumping-off point, but that’s not what Expats is, and its copious detours just feel like dead ends.
#REVIEW #Expats #Unfocused #Melodrama #Set #Among #Hong #Kongs #Wealthy
Note:- (Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor. The content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.))
