Let’s hear it for women of a certain age. As Nicole Kidman’s “unstoppable” ex-husband defies gravity in the last Mission Impossible movie, the actor and producer continues her quest to champion Liane Moriarty, the best-selling Australian author whose zesty and complex dialogue offers such fabulous opportunities for actresses over 40 – as showcased in Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and now The Last Anniversary on BBC One.
True, the second series of Big Little Lies was only fitfully gripping and, so far, season two of Nine Perfect Strangers is a twaddle-ridden drag. Still, this new six-parter isn’t milking a franchise, it’s launching one. Adapted by Kidman’s company, Blossom Films, from a novel Moriarty wrote in 2005, the result is thought-provoking, hilarious and scrumptiously well-acted. Though there’s no part for Kidman, the script provides luscious roles for 67-year-old Brit Miranda Richardson and 57-year-old Aussie Helen Thomson.
Thomson is the show’s secret weapon, though if you’ve seen her as Lynelle, in prize-winning romcom Colin from Accounts, you’ll already know she’s a genius. Once again, Thomson has been cast as a monstrously petulant/perky matriarch who, oblivious to the horror she inspires in her emotionally scarred adult daughter, behaves as if she’s a strong contender for Parent of the Year. The major difference between Lynelle and Enigma, the delusional diva Thomson plays here, is that Enigma is central to the plot. Which, by the way, is a bugger to condense.
In Sydney, orphaned journalist Sophie (Teresa Palmer) discovers that Connie, the dead grandmother of her ex-boyfriend, Thomas – bear with me! – has left her a big house in a beautiful but remote location. Once on the fictional Scribbly Gum Island, Sophie starts looking for love, while attempting to solve a 50-year-old mystery concerning a missing couple, an abandoned baby and two sisters (one of them the teenage Connie), that’s still drawing tourists to the area and keeping Enigma financially afloat. As the latter proudly declares, midway through a stage-managed tour, “That tiny baby was me! My name is Enigma Munro!”
Enigma’s extended family is bewilderingly large. There’s Connie’s younger sister Rose (Richardson), Connie’s daughter Margie (Susan Prior), son-in-law Ron (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), granddaughter Veronika (Danielle Macdonald), and the aforementioned Thomas (Charlie Garber), now married with a child. And let’s not forget Enigma’s own daughter Grace (Claude Scott-Mitchell), Grace’s husband Callum (Uli Latukefu), and the couple’s new baby Ollie. Luckily, each and every interaction between Enigma and these characters is worth savouring. Like Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya in The White Lotus, Enigma is a force of nature; camp without being cartoonish. My very favourite exchange – Enigma: “Am I a bad mother?” Rose: “Eat your soup!” Enigma: “That’s a yes! Is that a yes?”
As the secretive Rose, Richardson adds so much to the darkly comic vibe. Having been confined to voiceover work in recent years, the star of Dance with a Stranger and Blackadder II gets to remind us of her extraordinary range (she can be elfin or impish, the destroyer or the destroyed). Here, many of the most powerful scenes involve the camera simply trying to fathom her face. Scorn, frustration, grim resignation; seismic shifts of mood are conveyed by the tiniest of twitches. For the first four episodes, Richardson may be saddled with a ludicrously resplendent wig. And it was surely a challenge to be the only non-Antipodean member of the cast (she handles Rose’s Australian accent like a bar of slippery soap, maintaining her grip, but only just). Still, nothing gets in the way of her pared-down, warts-and-all approach. You can all but taste Rose’s depression.
Chronic sadness, by the way, is a theme, with Grace’s postpartum misery treated with great delicacy by head scriptwriter Samantha Strauss. An apparently serene and successful artist, Grace is prone to intrusive thoughts, which drop into the story like grenades and complicate her relationship with Sophie, who has her own problems. Sophie, because she’s dared to reach the age of 39 without being married or a parent, is frequently treated with contempt. Two very different toxic men refer to her being “a woman of a certain age”. One even suggests, during an excruciating dinner party, that she’s guilty of “sperm entrapment”.
It’s refreshing that, instead of pitting Grace and Sophie against each other, or having them become best buds, the script has them carefully circling each other, not daring to get close. While the older women make the deepest impression, you’ll have no trouble rooting for the young-ish ones, including Veronika, whose obsession with making a zeitgeisty podcast, What Kind of Mother, is a hoot.
What you don’t get, here, is understated elegance (if that’s your bag, watch the brilliant family saga Asura). Things often get silly. Really silly, though mostly in a tongue-in-cheek way, which is why it’s such a pleasure to go with the flow. Essentially, The Last Anniversary is a re-telling of Through a Glass Darkly, for fans of Mamma Mia! Island-based trauma is served up, only this time with bright colours, jokes and a difficult ma, instead of a difficult pa. As so often with Moriarty, mum’s the word. Nicole Kidman, I salute your mission. Keep up the good work.
