“Nine Perfect Strangers,” which begins Wednesday with three of its eight episodes, was adapted by Mr. Kelley and John Henry Butterworth from the 2018 novel by Liane Moriarty, who also wrote the novel “Big Little Lies” and seems to have distilled a successful formula down to just a few ingredients: Appalling behavior, sordid revelations and money.
The strangers of “Nine Perfect Strangers” are introduced as they make their way to Tranquillum House, a Northern California health retreat that at least one guest has found by Googling “most expensive.” The travelers include the Marconis— the “overly loquacious” and compensating Napoleon , his sour wife, Heather , and daughter, Zoe , all aiming to get past the death of Zoe’s twin brother one year before. Jessica and Ben have marital problems.
They have all come to see Masha , described as a “mystical Eastern-Bloc unicorn,” a guru who looks Elvish and sounds like Bela Lugosi. The point of her Russian origins is to give her an authoritarian air and some shadowy connections: At some point in her hazy professional past someone came very close to murdering her in—what else?—a parking garage. “You have all come here to die,” Masha tells her already anxious clients, whom she has instructed to dig their own graves and lie in them.
They have to give up their phones? They can’t drink? Take pills? Smoke dope? Did no one read the pamphlet? The reason for all the whining, as becomes clear, is that it provides the opportunity for expository complaining: Each of the nine gets to tell his or her story and explain his or her problems, which will be treated with Masha’s “new protocol,” the nature of which ought not be spoiled.
So is Ms. Kidman’s latest manifestation, which is presented by Mr. Levine with all the melodrama it deserves. Masha is one of the actress’s more flamboyant incarnations, and one of the wackier, but it can generate only so much fascination in a story intent on inducing disbelief and disengagement. “Did she give you any idea what to expect?” one character asks another, having just enjoyed an audience with Masha. “Suffering,” comes the response. Viewers should take heed.
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The number of people who will read this article.
Time to call it quits.
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