In noir, there’s rarely a more dangerous figure than the rich, bored housewife. Just ask, say, Walter Neff. So Little Big Lies is playing with dynamite mixing together three of them in what seems an explosive brew in HBO‘s upcoming miniseries.
Really, the tagline on the poster says it all, Big Little Lies, based off the novel of the same name, follows three women in a rich Southern California enclave as their lives spiral out of control and they toss around catty insults. The main draw, beyond watching Reese Witherspoon play the darkest timeline version of Elle Woods, is the sheer amount of talent thrown at this. The cast includes Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Adam Scott, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, and Alexander Skarsgard, with David E. Kelley handling the writing and Wild and Dallas Buyers’ Club director Jean-Marc Vallee directing the entire series.
That said, it might have a tricky road to walk. There’s no shortage of shows and movies about rich white people losing control of their mind on the air at the moment, after all, and while the cast is undeniably great, it might have to get past a list of other dramas to register on viewers’ radar. Still, the cast is attention-getting and HBO’s record is close to impeccable, so we’ll see how it does come its February 19th debut.
