Warning: Spoilers ahead from the premiere of “Big Little Lies” and first two episodes of “The Good Fight”
Two new buzzy, well-reviewed series debuted Sunday night, HBO’s “Big Little Lies” and CBS All Access’ “The Good Fight.” The former is selling us on its A-list cast, with Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon in their first TV roles in decades, the latter, on the next chapter of “The Good Wife” favorites Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo.
But in both cases, the dramas’ most fascinating characters turn out to be their younger, less-well-known female stars.
In “Big Little Lies,” we see a maturing actor, 25-year-old Shailene Woodley — who has received excellent notices playing teen roles in the Oscar-winning George Clooney film “The Descendants” and the box-office hit “The Fault In Our Stars” — playing a single mom with a past best seen in a rearview mirror (and holding her own against established talents such as Laura Dern, Kidman and Witherspoon). In “The Good Fight,” we get a Scottish TV actress, 30-year-old Rose Leslie (“Downton Abbey,” the tragic Ygritte of “Game of Thrones”) shining in her first big contemporary role alongside a veteran company of actors.
“Big Little Lies” is a murder mystery about the well-heeled moms of Monterey, Calif., whose obsession with their own social status leads to a homicide at a school fundraiser. Against a backdrop of surf-splashed, glass-fronted beach houses, the cozy world of three mothers with first-graders is shaken by the arrival of a fourth young mother, Jane Chapman (Woodley), whose son, Ziggy (Iain Armitage), gets accused of hurting his young female classmate on the first day of school. The boy denies doing it, but as the two outsiders in the community, Jane and her son are suspect.
Dropping Ziggy off at school in jeans and a plain black coat, hair pulled back in ponytail, Jane can’t hope to compete with the camera-ready moms of Monterey. Brittle Madeline Martha MacKenzie (Witherspoon, as the grown-up version of Tracy Flick from “Election”) arrives in full makeup, a flowered cocktail dress and stilettos. Icily languid Celeste Wright (Kidman) wears a brushed cotton raincoat, a cashmere sweater and thigh-high boots. Career mom Renata Klein (Laura Dern) mistakenly thinks Jane works as a nanny; one of the other moms compares her to a “dirty old Prius parked outside of Barneys.”
But even Jane is self-aware enough to know something’s off. She tells Celeste and Madeline how beautiful they are. “I see this life and it’s wonderful, but it doesn’t quite belong to me . . . You guys are so right — exactly right — and that makes me feel wrong.”
One senses what’s wrong with Jane, her very “otherness,” will drive the narrative engine of this show, written by David E. Kelley and based on the novel by Liane Moriarty. Of the four principal characters, she’s the one shrouded in mystery. For one, she’s a loner. There’s no man to help her raise Ziggy. And as opposed to the large homes of the other Monterey women, with kitchens you can drive through, Jane lives in a shabby, one-bedroom cottage and sleeps on a lumpy pull-out couch — with a gun under her pillow.
With the cops spelling out the homicide evidence in the first episode — a skull laceration and contusion — one is led to believe a blunt instrument likely caused the fatal injury. We don’t know who died yet, whether it’s one of the moms or, God forbid, one of their children. But Jane definitely seems connected to the crime.
A white-collar crime shapes the first episode of “The Good Fight.” Diane Lockhart, the effortlessly elegant attorney played by Baranski on “The Good Wife,” has to forgo her retirement, including a delicious house in Provence, France, when it’s revealed she invested her life savings in a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme run by her friend Henry Rindell (Paul Guilfoyle). His daughter, Maia (Leslie), has just graduated from law school and taken an entry-level job at Diane’s firm. But what she’s learning on the job turns out to be nothing compared to what she’s learning is going on at home — and the results often leave her speechless.
As the vulnerable, conscientious Maia, Leslie is refreshingly understated and blends seamlessly with the well-known faces from “The Good Wife,” including Baranski, Zach Grenier (who plays sourpuss attorney David Lee) and Jumbo, the flinty but untrustworthy Lucca Quinn. Like that of her godmother, Diane, Maia’s incipient career is rocked by a series of developments: Her father’s arrest and the advice from her attorney girlfriend to cut off contact with her family until the scandal subsides. Then in the second episode, Maia discovers her mother, Lenore (Bernadette Peters), has been having an affair.
As opposed to the women of “Big Little Lies,” who may or may not be connected to a murder, Maia almost knows too much. With each new revelation, a bomb goes off in front of her face.
Whatever her fate may be, we can’t look away. “Big Little Lies” and “The Good Fight” may have had a best-selling book and a long-running series, respectively, to sell us on their premise. But it’s Jane and Maia who will keep us tuning in for weeks to come.
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