Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ On Hulu, Where A Bunch Of Insufferable Jerks Descend Upon A Mysterious Wellness Resort

David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman have cornered the market on shows that examine the inner lives of rich people. Between Big Little Lies, The Undoing and now Nine Perfect Strangers, the two of them have produced hours upon hours of drama that tell us that money doesn’t equate to happiness. You think we would have gotten the message by now, right? Guess not. Read on for more about the latest adaptation from BLL author Liane Moriarty.

NINE PERFECT STRANGERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: From the bottom of a blender, we see ice and fruit being mixed into a smoothie. Then sunrise over a bucolic resort.

The Gist: The first scenes of Nine Perfect Strangers show those nine people somewhere on the way to the Tranquillum resort in California. The first group is Napoleon Marconi (Michael Shannon), his wife Heather (Asher Keddie) and daughter Zoe (Grace Van Patten). Napoleon yammers on about the awards this site has gotten and what he wants to get out of the ten-day retreat they’re about to go on, but his talkativeness is covering up a disquiet mood in the car.

A yellow Lamborghini traverses a bumpy rural road, where influencer Jessica Chandler (Samara Weaving) tries to make a selfie video for Instagram. Her husband Ben (Melvin Gregg) is still wondering why they’re going to this retreat. Jessica switches from her vocal fry to a serious voice to tell him that they have issues.

Frances Welty (Melissa McCarthy) is driving to Tranquillum by herself; the successful novelist gets a call from her agent that he can’t sell her latest novel, which makes Frances pull over and scream out to the hills. Another car pulls up; Tony Hogburn (Bobby Cannavale) gets out and asks if everything is OK. Frances gets immediately offended.

At a general store, Lars Lee (Lucas Evans) loads up on things that the owner says will likely be taken away from him when he gets there; Carmel Schneider (Regina Hall) overhears the conversation, and lets Lars know that she’s going to Tranquillum, too, and is really looking forward to it. She also talks about how much she admires Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman), the woman who owns the resort.

When everyone gets there, “wellness consultants” Yao (Manny Jacinto) and Delilah (Tiffany Boone) take everyone’s phones, even if people like Frances don’t really want to let them go. Frances is horrified to see Tony, whom she fought with on the road to the resort, as a guest. Napoleon chats up the Chandlers as they try to get romantic in a hot tub. Carmel, who is into affirmations and other self-help, encounters Tony as he take a whiz next to a tree; Tony’s last call is to his daughter, where he leaves a message wondering if she’ll even hear it.

Frances breaks down a bit in her room, which is when Masha comes in; she explains to Frances that people go to Tranquillum “for the suffering”, meaning that they’re going to see hard truths about their lives. The Marconis are already facing a hard truth, as they’re going through the anniversary of a tragic event.

At orientation, Masha responds to Tony and Lars doubting her authority by telling her story about how she was a businessperson who literally got shot and came back from the dead with the help of Yao, and when she gets a little too personal. Heather Marconi calls Masha out, saying “you know why we’re here.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given the involvement of David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman, not to mention the fact that Nine Perfect Strangers is based on a Liane Moriarty novel, there are more than a few glancing similarities to Big Little Lies, at least when it comes to the vibe of digging into the sordid lives of overprivileged people. And, given that we all just finished watching a show about that — The White Lotus — we wonder if Hulu really thought about the timing of this show coming on the heels of the HBO hit.

Our Take: Nailing down just what kind of a show Nine Perfect Strangers is going to be is very tough during its first episode. Because we have to be introduced to not only the nine people coming to the retreat, but to Masha, Yao and Delilah as well, we only get really sketchy portraits of most of them. Lots of information is held back, which just makes all the people coming to the retreat look like insufferable jerks (except for Hall’s character, which we’ll get to in a second). In other words, it feels like The White Lotus with less palm trees.

We know it’s not going to just be about these people getting emotionally and spiritually well. Masha is going to show them something about themselves and each other that is not going to be very pleasant. “This is Tranquillum. I mean to fuck with all of you,” Masha says to Heather during the orientation. It’s not a retreat or escape, as these people think. Masha is going to show them the horrible things that they’re doing or have experienced and make each guest confront them.

But we’re not sure we really care about this journey all that much. This is the third series that Kelley and Kidman have collaborated on (The Undoing being the third one) where we’re supposed to dig into the unseemly lives of these mostly white, mostly comfortable, mostly wealthy people. There comes a point where you would rather just let these characters suffer in silence than see everything that’s haunting their lives, mainly because it just makes you shrug.

This is where the individual performances come into play. Kidman is a distraction with her Russian accent, but so was Kate Winslet with her Delco accent on Mare Of Easttown, and we got used to that after awhile. The standout so far is McCarthy, who’s playing more towards the characters she plays in films like Can You Ever Forgive Me?, being funny without being outlandish and conveying Frances’ emotional turmoil roiling under her seemingly tough surface. Shannon’s chatty Napoleon is hiding some really dark stuff, we can just feel it, mainly because we see that darkness in his manner, even as he’s being gregarious.

Hall’s character, Carmel, is the one that gives us hope that there’s more to this show than just vapid rich people with problems. She plays Carmel as someone who used all her savings to come to Tranquillum because she desperately needs the help, someone who is willing to give herself to Masha because she has no other choice. Her perspective is important here, because it might actually help ground everyone else.

Perhaps as we get to know everyone else better, we’ll see that their issues are more than just people with first world problems gone amok. But the first episode does such a poor job of establishing these characters, we just don’t know if we’re going to stick around to find out more about them.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The scene we describe above, where Masha tells Heather that “I mean to fuck with all of you.”

Sleeper Star: We see Jacinto and Boone in their own scene together; it’s immediately apparent that they’re not there just to be “wellness consultants.” In other words, their characters are more intertwined in the plot than we think at first.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Tony calls Carmel “Chenelle” not more than two minutes after she introduces herself to him. Is he that much of a jerk that he forgets someone’s name that quickly, even while he’s taking a piss?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite our reservations, there are enough good performances in Nine Perfect Strangers to merit watching beyond the first episode. But Kelley and company leave so much on the table at the end of that episode that a viewer really has to figure out whether they want to take this ride with these people or not before continuing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Nine Perfect Strangers On Hulu