I should start by saying that I have not read the book this mini-series is based on and, frankly, having seen the mini-series have no desire to do so, so this review is exclusively for the screen adaptation.
Expats, shortened from The Expatriates, the novel’s original title, because who can possibly contend with all those extra syllables, takes place in Hong Kong. That was the main appeal of this production for me, the seasoned armchair traveler. Hong Kong isn’t a place I’d want to visit in person. It doesn’t look particularly attractive, and it is much too vertical and overpopulated. But it’s interesting to see on screen. In Hong Kong, the story follows three women. Mercy, Hillary, and Margaret. The first one is young and single, the other two are older and married. Or rather, the story follows two families and Mercy, the hapless idiot woman-child who crashes and burns through them. Again, no idea how this was in the book, but on screen, Mercy is the sort of tedious obnoxious annoying representative of the younger generation that makes you want to smack her right off screen. Despite having an American citizenship and a prestigious degree, she blunders through life, wasting it. Her excuse is mommy didn’t love her enough. Seriously, that’s Mercy’s entire existence summed up. Whe is 24 by way of snarky 17. She squanders her time doing catering gigs and living in a shitty apartment. Then she meets Margaret and her kids and manages to lose her youngest. And sure, people keep saying how it could have happened to anyone, but let’s be clear here: Mercy deliberately lets go on the very small child’s hand in a very busy market because she is too busy texting and trying to figure out if she should charge this nice family for taking her out to eat. Afterwards, Margaret is understandably distraught, which she proceeds to (non-deliberately) take out on her family: husband and two kids. Also, her accusations alienate her bestie, Hillary, who lives in the same posh highrise and is going through her crap as her ten-year marriage is falling apart. The marriage started to fall apart because after jointly deciding on no kids, the husband, David, suddenly changes his mind. And when Hillary doesn’t get on board with that, David begins to drink again and hook up with Mercy. Yes, Mercy again. You cannot avoid that wrecking ball of a girl. To make matters worse, Mercy gets knocked up by David, and inexplicably, despite having no support system, job, income, maturity, etc., decides to keep it. Mostly because she’s just that kind of an idiot. She breaks up with David and manages a short relationship with a lovely local girl to who she blatantly lies about her situation. Meanwhile, Margaret turns into the kind of woman who is straight-up toxic for her family, so her husband suggests to move back to NYC. And when she changes her mind last minute, he is all but relieved to leave her behind. What she thinks she is going to do alone in Hong Kong is impossible to know. She has no job or apartment. She doesn’t seem to be actively looking for the kids i.e. hiring private detectives or putting up posters. She just kind of walks and looks around, which for a person of Nicole Kidman’s formidable height might be a good tactic, especially in Asia, but still … Hillary is possibly the only one here who gets something of a happy ending … or at least a bright new rug by the end. Do we learn much about these ridiculously wealthy, privileged women, except for the fact that their lives are a mess? Not really. All of the women in the show have shitty husbands, except for Margaret who ruins her own marriage. There is also a heavy exploration of the upstairs/downstairs dynamic from a place where people seem to have live-in maids like it’s perfectly normal. The two maids the story focusses on, Margaret’s and Hillary’s, appear to be experiencing something like Stockholm syndrome, complete with uncontested blind royalty, even though their employers hold all the cards, and play with their fates as carelessly as children might with things they don’t understand the value of. It’s easy to see why a book like this would gather the attention it did and adaptation it got: it checks SO many boxes, which is how the modern publishing industry works. In tone, for me, it’s way too women’s fiction. Way more so than a straight-up drama. With Mercy running everything. As a mini-series, it’s wildly uneven. Which is what happens when you get too many writers. The last episode is especially off tonally. It was given to the book author to write and mostly serves as a reminder that just because someone can write a book, doesn’t mean they can write a teleplay. The acting is good. But the casting is questionable. Once again, the powers that be seem to be confused about how age works. Sarayu Blue as Hillary is excellent and can just about pass for 40, while being much closer to 50. Her onscreen husband is notably well-hung and not shy about it. Margaret’s husband keeps his clothes on, fit as he looks, but is somehow celebrating his 50th birthday and looking mid-40s at most. But Nicole Kidman is well into her 50s. How exactly do we buy her as a mother of a three-year-old? I’m sorry, are we still pretending that whatever she has been doing to herself to stop the time is working? She looks terrifying. Sure, the show needed a star to hitch itself onto, but was there no one more appropriate? Really? Anyway, this review is already much too long, so let’s wrap it up. The show, for all its numerous faults, is strangely compelling to watch, but the ending is so unsatisfying that it takes a lot away from it. Do it for a Hong Kong trip, maybe. Maybe.
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