Ever since Big Little Lies became the standout series of 2017, showrunners have been desperately trying to distil whatever it was that made it so good and bottle it.
It’s inspired a slew of TV shows with complex female protagonists and inexplicably good hair, all with vaguely similar names (Little Fires Everywhere, Tiny Pretty Things, Sharp Objects, Tiny Beautiful Things) and secretive, difficult husbands. They are usually executive produced by Reese Witherspoon.
The latest in this genre is The Last Thing He Told Me, a new AppleTV+ limited drama series about a complex female protagonist with a secretive husband which is, you guessed it, exec produced by Reese Witherspoon. Hannah, played by Jennifer Garner, is a professional woodturner who lives on a houseboat with her eerily perfect husband Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his moody teenage daughter Bailey (Angourie Rice), who is resistant to Hannah’s stepmotherly love.
The series kicks off with an intense flashforward to the penultimate episode: Hannah is in a hotel, her phone smashed, her husband Owen’s face on her lockscreen, symbolically cracked into a million little pieces, when she realises Bailey is missing. As she frantically searches the hotel for her stepdaughter, who is clearly in very real danger, the series successfully sets itself up as gripping, dramatic and bingeable.
Then we snap back to the present day. Owen is there, being handsome and attentive in a way that instantly puts wily audiences on alert. Hannah is happy, Bailey is sulky, the family is established in their not-quite-perfect-but-just-chugging-along equilibrium. They also live in an atypical and stunning location – a houseboat in Sausalito, San Francisco’s backyard seaside community - that we’ve become accustomed with in these series like this, reminiscent of Big Little Lies’ lusciously affluent setting of Monterey.
But as Hannah is preparing her and Owen’s anniversary dinner, she has a visitor: a schoolmate of Bailey’s who hands her a note. “Protect her,” it reads. Boom. Threat is present, Owen is nowhere to be found and won’t pick up his phone. Hannah drives to his office to find it’s being raided by the FBI. Bailey, unaware at this point, opens her school locker to find a bag full of cash and a cryptic note of her own. The two women are forced to form an unlikely detective duo and track Owen down, unravelling the dark secret behind why he disappeared as they do it.
Garner is the backbone of the show and the most esteemed actor in the cast, but her portrayal of Hannah can occasionally come across as a little wooden (excuse the pun). She often sports the same expression (furrowed brow, vaguely pursed lips) throughout an entire scene, or even episode. As she and Bailey trudge through their fact-finding expedition, their relationship transforms and the pair soften, but it takes time, and the “You’re not my mom!” dynamic does get a little old midway through.
Coster-Waldau is brilliant at being a smooth talking is-he-good-is-he-bad bait and switcher and you rarely feel certain of his motivations, which keeps you on your toes. He was clearly born to lovebomb complex women and hide dark secrets from them; perhaps it’s just something about his face.
Angourie Rice, meanwhile, is phenomenal and though she plays nearly the exact same role as her Mare of Easttown character, it’s hard to care, because she is simply so convincing. All the other characters (lawyers, police officers, best friends) feel a little like stock background characters, and aren’t given a huge opportunity to flesh themselves out.
What is given an unusual amount of weight is Hannah’s career in woodturning, which, let me tell you now, bears absolutely no relevance to the plot. It would make sense if her profession actually pertained to something revealed later in the mystery, or was a useful tool for furthering the plot, ie a doctor, police officer, lawyer, but it is not. She just loves to turn wood and it comes up all the time.
The series fails to bottle the mystique, eroticism and humour of its prototype – Big Little Lies – but none of the series that followed Big Little Lies’ reign have ever been able to compete, not even its own second season, so this is to be expected.
Still, it is a good watch, and I did find myself four episodes deep at 2am in bed, determined to squeeze in one more little shiny pretty episode. Like all series in this niche subgenre, it is beautiful shot and designed: the Salucito houseboat is like an AirBnB of dreams, and the cast are all fantastic and, indeed, likeable when they’re given more of a chance to have a personality. Just try and get past all the woodturning.
