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Irish Independent
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘Nine Perfect Strangers' season 2 review: Thinly-drawn clichés, supremely irritating characters – and Nicole Kidman's awful accent
Then there's the other one: the producer-star who continually churns out glossy, empty, increasingly samey streaming dramas about the suffering rich, such as The Undoing, Expats and, of course, Nine Perfect Strangers (Prime Video, Thursday, May 22), which is back for a second season, despite originally being billed as a miniseries (a sneaky practice that's become commonplace). If you thought the first one in 2021 was a load of old drivel, the second, which opens with a double bill and lacks the foundation of Liane Moriarty's source novel, is nine times worse. Frequently almost comedically bad, but without the saving grace of anything resembling humour, it's the answer to a question nobody asked. Once again, Kidman dons a platinum blonde wig and adopts an off-the-peg 'Russian' accent that even Meryl Streep, during her funny-voices-and-silly-hats phase, would have been ashamed of as weird wellness guru Masha Dmitrichenko, who's fluent in psychobabble bullsh*t. Last time, Masha offered personal transformation to nine troubled – and very well-off – people at her luxurious sanatorium Tranquillum House by spiking their smoothies with psychedelic drugs without their consent to unlock repressed memories. Oh, and they'd also be able to commune with the dead. Well, sort of. Masha got high on her own supply so she could talk to her dead daughter, who she was still mourning. As Season 2 opens, the daughter's ghost is still hanging around and Masha is back in business, this time at a new sanatorium in the Bavarian Alps. At least the guests in Season 1 were more or less tolerable She was persuaded to set up shop again by her old mentor Helena (Lena Olin), who's bankrolling the operation so Masha can try out her revolutionary new treatment delivery system. Masha has become a global celebrity since the first outing, thanks to a bestselling book called, you guessed it, Nine Perfect Strangers. She's also the target of several federal investigations. The alpine location is ideal for her purposes. The mountains block out mobile phone signals and the roads are impassable by car, meaning those nasty prosecutors won't be able to serve her their writs and the new batch of guests won't easily be able to bail out if they get fed up with the whole thing. Luckily, viewers can leave any time they want, and I'm betting quite a few will long before the eight episodes are up. At least the guests in Season 1 were more or less tolerable. The new lot – who all know they'll be given drugs now that Masha's treatment methods are out in the open – are for the most part thinly-drawn clichés and supremely irritating. Christine Baranski, doing her usual Christine Baranski shtick, but without any funny lines to back her up, plays the sex-mad Victoria. She's agreed to meet up with her daughter Imogen (Annie Murphy), a whingeing, permanently angry Millennial who becomes even more whingey and angry when she discovers her mother has brought along her latest toyboy, Matteo (Aras Aydin). Tina (musician King Princess), a pianist and former child prodigy who now refuses to play, has been dragged to the sanatorium by her girlfriend Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) in the mistaken belief she was going for a holiday in a luxurious spa resort rather than a spell in a psychological torture chamber. Dolly de Leon is Agnes, a celebrity nun (eh?), who's lost her faith. Henry Golding is Peter, who's awaiting the arrival of his father, billionaire businessman David (Mark Strong), on whom Masha, who has previous with him, seems to be fixated. The only cast member who makes an impression is Murray Bartlett, excellent as ever, as Brian, a puppeteer and former children's TV presenter who's been unravelling ever since his show was cancelled after he had a meltdown on set that went viral. 'It is only the beginning,' Masha tells an adoring conference audience early on. Nope, Masha, for some of us, it's the end. I'm checking out. Rating: One star
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nicole Kidman 'up for' bringing together all her TV characters into one show
Nicole Kidman would be "up for" uniting all her TV characters into one show. The 57-year-old actress - who has appeared in programmes including 'Nine Perfect Strangers', 'Big Little Lies', 'The Undoing' and 'The Perfect Couple' in recent years - is always "game" for a new challenge and thinks it would be "hilarious" to bring all of her alter egos together. Asked about the possibility, she told People magazine: 'That's hilarious. I'd be up for it. 'As you know, I'm up for most things. I like to be able to say I'm game. So I'm always ready to try things. 'I have a huge passion for what I do. I love doing what I do, and I've been incredibly fortunate in my journey, and I'm just always a bit excited. I don't take any of it for granted. I'm like, 'Okay, thank you. Thank you, universe.' " Nicole can next be seen reprising her role as lifestyle guru Masha in a new series of 'Nine Perfect Strangers' and she was thrilled to get the chance to play such a "shark" again. Asked why she signed on for a second season, she said: 'Because she's fun and powerful, and [castmate] Maisie [Richardson-Sellers] said something like, 'Masha sharks it.' So I was like, 'What does that mean?' But I think that means she's a shark. She comes in, and I don't get to play sharks very often." Despite being "up for" most things professionally, Nicole insisted she won't be enlisting husband Keith Urban - the father of her daughters Sunday, 16, and 14-year-old Faith - to be her co-star in any of her TV shows or movies. She said: 'We're together in life, so we don't need to do our show together. Our life is a show.' The 'Babygirl' star - who also has Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, with her ex-husband Tom Cruise - has also turned her attention to producing but teased recently that she is "still finding [her] voice behind the camera, and hopes her "best work" is still to come, having been mentored by the likes of former Paramound Pictures chief executive Sherry Lansing. She told HELLO! Magazine: "I love the involvement and the collaboration that being a producer offers. "I've had an amazing group of mentors and people who have pushed me. "But I'm still finding my voice, and I'm hoping that I haven't done my best work yet."
Perth Now
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Nicole Kidman 'up for' bringing together all her TV characters into one show
Nicole Kidman would be "up for" uniting all her TV characters into one show. The 57-year-old actress - who has appeared in programmes including 'Nine Perfect Strangers', 'Big Little Lies', 'The Undoing' and 'The Perfect Couple' in recent years - is always "game" for a new challenge and thinks it would be "hilarious" to bring all of her alter egos together. Asked about the possibility, she told People magazine: 'That's hilarious. I'd be up for it. 'As you know, I'm up for most things. I like to be able to say I'm game. So I'm always ready to try things. 'I have a huge passion for what I do. I love doing what I do, and I've been incredibly fortunate in my journey, and I'm just always a bit excited. I don't take any of it for granted. I'm like, 'Okay, thank you. Thank you, universe.' " Nicole can next be seen reprising her role as lifestyle guru Masha in a new series of 'Nine Perfect Strangers' and she was thrilled to get the chance to play such a "shark" again. Asked why she signed on for a second season, she said: 'Because she's fun and powerful, and [castmate] Maisie [Richardson-Sellers] said something like, 'Masha sharks it.' So I was like, 'What does that mean?' But I think that means she's a shark. She comes in, and I don't get to play sharks very often." Despite being "up for" most things professionally, Nicole insisted she won't be enlisting husband Keith Urban - the father of her daughters Sunday, 16, and 14-year-old Faith - to be her co-star in any of her TV shows or movies. She said: 'We're together in life, so we don't need to do our show together. Our life is a show.' The 'Babygirl' star - who also has Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, with her ex-husband Tom Cruise - has also turned her attention to producing but teased recently that she is "still finding [her] voice behind the camera, and hopes her "best work" is still to come, having been mentored by the likes of former Paramount Pictures chief executive Sherry Lansing. She told HELLO! Magazine: "I love the involvement and the collaboration that being a producer offers. "I've had an amazing group of mentors and people who have pushed me. "But I'm still finding my voice, and I'm hoping that I haven't done my best work yet."
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Rich Tourists Who Want More, and More, and More
What do the wealthy actually want? Some billionaires have been startlingly transparent about their intent to shape the systems that govern American life. Some celebrities just need uncomplicated adoration from the masses. In recent years, several prestige shows have examined the psychology of a different, less visible category of the ultrarich. They walk down the street without bodyguards; they splurge on fancy tasting menus; they attend parties full of people with the same social breeding and balance sheets. But when they interact with those outside their world, their hidden desires and values are inevitably revealed. On The Undoing, the murder of a working-class mother whose child attends a fancy Upper East Side private school exposes the double life of a respected local physician. On Big Little Lies, a close-knit group of rich California moms—and their breezy social norms—is subjected to the judgment of an outsider. And The White Lotus, another HBO series, has poked and prodded at the wealthy guests of luxury resorts scattered around the world, showing how the casual exploitation of others is central to their vision of leisure. Rich and poor characters alike behave badly on the show—but only the former expect to get away with their sins, and usually do. Season 3 of Mike White's anthology series, which premieres on Sunday, follows a motley crew of vacationers at a Southeast Asian outpost of the titular hotel. As in previous seasons, guests of the White Lotus land themselves in all manner of compromising situations when they allow their base impulses—the need for sex, or chemical indulgence—to overtake them. But the shift to Thailand also introduces a new avenue for the show's character studies. While in Asia, some of the guests end up contemplating the role of spirituality and organized religion in their life—and bristling at Buddhist teachings that seemingly run counter to their most ego-driven convictions. The selfish tourists are trapped, as one newly sober expat describes it, on a 'never-ending carousel of lust and suffering,' and those unwilling to wrestle with their discomfort may never jump off. The most obvious conflict of principles emerges among the Ratliff family, who come to the resort because Piper (played by Sarah Catherine Hook), the college-aged daughter, wants to interview a local monk. The Ratliffs don't spend much time together on a regular basis, it seems, and their vacation becomes an exercise in attempting to reconcile each family member's competing priorities. Father Tim (Jason Isaacs) is cautiously permissive about his bookish daughter's interest in Buddhism; mother Victoria (Parker Posey), seems bewildered; her brash older brother mocks it outright. 'Buddhism is for people that wanna suppress in life,' Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) says to his younger brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), on the Ratliffs' first night in Thailand. 'They're afraid—don't get attached; don't have desires; don't even try. Just sit there in a lotus position with a thumb up your ass.' [Read: On failing the family vacation] To Saxon, the point of life is getting what you want—a worldview without room for avarice isn't one he respects. That's a fairly standard outlook for a White Lotus character, and Saxon's experience seems to graph neatly onto the show's established patterns: Each season features a rich, conventionally attractive white man who expects the world (or the closest available woman) to bend to his whims. What makes The White Lotus often satisfying to watch is how the show challenges these characters, however briefly, to confront the assumptions they've built their life on. It's not just that they're attached to their material objects or social status; many of them have never even thought about what their comfort demands of other people. For some characters, imagining a different way of living means being forced to see how insecure they are about their looks or how flimsy their friendships have become; for others, it's much more existential. These journeys are more complex than a simple tale of rich people getting their comeuppance in the tropics. Some of what gives The White Lotus its charge is the show's insistence on pushing its characters into thorny erotic terrain. Season 3 slowly upends Saxon's understanding of himself, as the easily attained passions he's always taken for granted—professional success, attention from women—cede ground to unspeakable, unacknowledged yearnings. The White Lotus has often portrayed sex as an exchange of power, and Saxon's storyline shows the haunting aftereffect of unnamed desires. Later in the series, a different character regales a former friend with memories from an era in his life when he discovered an appetite for role-play. Considered alongside Saxon's journey, these scenes underscore how inextricable sex is from the characters' sense of self—and how their identity is attached to invisible hierarchies. Without others affirming their superiority, be it in the bedroom or in the boardroom, they wind up adrift. Part of why the White Lotus characters are pushed toward cataclysmic (if also fleeting) personal revelations is how the series traps them in contained, unfamiliar settings. Every season of The White Lotus opens with the killing of a character whose identity is only later revealed. The hotel guests are sometimes too self-absorbed to notice, but this season amps up the terrors lurking around every corner in the week leading to the mysterious death. The music is eerier, and the environment seems more foreboding. Even the animals pose a threat—a number of the season's most suspenseful moments involve patrons either running away from, or getting overly friendly with, the local wildlife. And yet, most of the peril that the rich guests have encountered thus far is of their own making. There's only so much catharsis that a show about the ultrarich can offer. The White Lotus may be a show about wealthy people behaving reprehensibly, but it still exults in depicting their luxurious lifestyles, at a time when average Americans have been warned to prepare for economic hardship ahead. When one character says that having access to a yacht is worth the risk of being killed, her blithe assessment doesn't land as a shocking provocation; the camera seems to be in love with the boat too. The characters are not wholly irredeemable, and some do arrive through meditation and self-reflection at meaningful answers about their compulsions, even as others remain unwilling to consider such questions about their motivations (and how their actions affect other people). But no matter how many internal crises they face, they usually end up sailing off into the sunset. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
A Fabulous Vacation Where Everyone Gets Hurt
What do the wealthy actually want? Some billionaires have been startlingly transparent about their intent to shape the systems that govern American life. Some celebrities just need uncomplicated adoration from the masses. In recent years, several prestige shows have examined the psychology of a different, less visible category of the ultrarich. They walk down the street without bodyguards; they splurge on fancy tasting menus; they attend parties full of people with the same social breeding and balance sheets. But when they interact with those outside their world, their hidden desires and values are inevitably revealed. On The Undoing, the murder of a working-class mother whose child attends a fancy Upper East Side private school exposes the double life of a respected local physician. On Big Little Lies, a close-knit group of rich California moms—and their breezy social norms—is subjected to the judgment of an outsider. And The White Lotus, another HBO series, has poked and prodded at the wealthy guests of luxury resorts scattered around the world, showing how the casual exploitation of others is central to their vision of leisure. Rich and poor characters alike behave badly on the show—but only the former expect to get away with their sins, and usually do. Season 3 of Mike White's anthology series, which premieres on Sunday, follows a motley crew of vacationers at a Southeast Asian outpost of the titular hotel. As in previous seasons, guests of the White Lotus land themselves in all manner of compromising situations when they allow their base impulses—the need for sex, or chemical indulgence—to overtake them. But the shift to Thailand also introduces a new avenue for the show's character studies. While in Asia, some of the guests end up contemplating the role of spirituality and organized religion in their life—and bristling at Buddhist teachings that seemingly run counter to their most ego-driven convictions. The selfish tourists are trapped, as one newly sober expat describes it, on a 'never-ending carousel of lust and suffering,' and those unwilling to wrestle with their discomfort may never jump off. The most obvious conflict of principles emerges among the Ratliff family, who come to the resort because Piper (played by Sarah Catherine Hook), the college-aged daughter, wants to interview a local monk. The Ratliffs don't spend much time together on a regular basis, it seems, and their vacation becomes an exercise in attempting to reconcile each family member's competing priorities. Father Tim (Jason Isaacs) is cautiously permissive about his bookish daughter's interest in Buddhism; mother Victoria (Parker Posey), seems bewildered; her brash older brother mocks it outright. 'Buddhism is for people that wanna suppress in life,' Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) says to his younger brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), on the Ratliffs' first night in Thailand. 'They're afraid—don't get attached; don't have desires; don't even try. Just sit there in a lotus position with a thumb up your ass.' To Saxon, the point of life is getting what you want—a worldview without room for avarice isn't one he respects. That's a fairly standard outlook for a White Lotus character, and Saxon's experience seems to graph neatly onto the show's established patterns: Each season features a rich, conventionally attractive white man who expects the world (or the closest available woman) to bend to his whims. What makes The White Lotus often satisfying to watch is how the show challenges these characters, however briefly, to confront the assumptions they've built their life on. It's not just that they're attached to their material objects or social status; many of them have never even thought about what their comfort demands of other people. For some characters, imagining a different way of living means being forced to see how insecure they are about their looks or how flimsy their friendships have become; for others, it's much more existential. These journeys are more complex than a simple tale of rich people getting their comeuppance in the tropics. Some of what gives The White Lotus its charge is the show's insistence on pushing its characters into thorny erotic terrain. Season 3 slowly upends Saxon's understanding of himself, as the easily attained passions he's always taken for granted—professional success, attention from women—cede ground to unspeakable, unacknowledged yearnings. The White Lotus has often portrayed sex as an exchange of power, and Saxon's storyline shows the haunting aftereffect of unnamed desires. Later in the series, a different character regales a former friend with memories from an era in his life when he discovered an appetite for role-play. Considered alongside Saxon's journey, these scenes underscore how inextricable sex is from the characters' sense of self—and how their identity is attached to invisible hierarchies. Without others affirming their superiority, be it in the bedroom or in the boardroom, they wind up adrift. Part of why the White Lotus characters are pushed toward cataclysmic (if also fleeting) personal revelations is how the series traps them in contained, unfamiliar settings. Every season of The White Lotus opens with the killing of a character whose identity is only later revealed. The hotel guests are sometimes too self-absorbed to notice, but this season amps up the terrors lurking around every corner in the week leading to the mysterious death. The music is eerier, and the environment seems more foreboding. Even the animals pose a threat—a number of the season's most suspenseful moments involve patrons either running away from, or getting overly friendly with, the local wildlife. And yet, most of the peril that the rich guests have encountered thus far is of their own making. There's only so much catharsis that a show about the ultrarich can offer. The White Lotus may be a show about wealthy people behaving reprehensibly, but it still exults in depicting their luxurious lifestyles, at a time when average Americans have been warned to prepare for economic hardship ahead. When one character says that having access to a yacht is worth the risk of being killed, her blithe assessment doesn't land as a shocking provocation; the camera seems to be in love with the boat too. The characters are not wholly irredeemable, and some do arrive through meditation and self-reflection at meaningful answers about their compulsions, even as others remain unwilling to consider such questions about their motivations (and how their actions affect other people). But no matter how many internal crises they face, they usually end up sailing off into the sunset.
