I watched the first season of Expats on Amazon Prime and was sorely disappointed by the quality of the six-episode offering. Directed by Lulu Wang (Posthumous 2014, The Farewell 2019) the show is based on a 2016 novel called The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, which received mostly positive reviews. The story follows the lives of a group of expatriates living in Hong Kong and chronicles their interactions with each other, and how they navigate the unfamiliar world around them as a tragedy befalls some of them.
Expats starts amidst the action and introduces the audience to the characters a year after a tragedy that connects them all has taken place. Starting at this point was a poor choice as the non-linear structure only serves to confuse and frustrate the viewer. With only hints as to the event that has happened and how these people are connected, the first episode doesn’t coalesce until the very end. In the first episode, there is a befuddling scene with Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies) as Margaret Woo and Sarayu Blue (Blockers) as Hilary Starr, dancing barefoot in an empty noodle shop to a disco song, oblivious to the annoyed workers in the back of the shop. Their devil-may-care attitude clashed with the nature of their conversation about the tragedy and didn’t so much to endear the audience to these characters.
The second episode was an improvement of sorts, finally revealing the nature of the tragedy they have experienced. This episode rounds out some of the characters and their motivations. The show would have been arguably better if it started at this point instead of a year into the future.
Expats does an interesting job of exploring the relationship the wealthy expats have with their staff. The audience watches the significant glances Margaret and her husband Clarke (Brian Tee) give each other when their Nanny, Essie (Ruby Ruiz), comes into the room as they are complaining about her service. Margaret is concerned that Essie is too familiar with her children and is taking liberties. Expats goes to pains to show the audience that Margaret is kind to service people, unlike many of her peers. Hillary and her husband, David (Jack Huston) have a driver, Sam, who knows all the family secrets that are revealed through awkward conversations as he drives the couple to and from their destinations. Their housekeeper, Purie (Amelyn Pardenilla) is so involved that she helps hide some of David’s secrets. She is ever present in their apartment, vacuuming while Hilary sits back and reads the paper. It results in an exploration of class and position that is not often seen in television and while it barely scratched the surface of the topic, it was refreshing to see. Margaret keeps saying that Essie is family, and the strength of that bond is tested to its limits by the tragedy.
Casting Nicole Kidman in the lead for this show was a mistake, one that is difficult to overlook. Kidman does not convincingly pull off Margaret as a nuanced, grief-stricken character. She succeeded with this in films such as The Others and Cold Mountain but fails to capture that same magic again in Expats. In pivotal scenes, her presence is a distraction rather than lending the appropriate horror to the situation. Kidman was heavily involved with developing the series, and was attached to production from the beginning, but having her play a significantly younger character was a head scratching choice. Unfortunately, despite the Emmy-winning nature of the subject matter, this is one of her weaker performances.
Several of the other actors put in notable performances including Brian Tee as a grieving father with children he must continue to raise, his performance is powerful and grounds Kidman’s when they interact. Ji-Young Yoo is mesmerizing as the nanny whose mistake sets off the tragedy. Her scenes are believably tortured as a young woman grappling with immense guilt and its’ hard to turn away from her pain. Amelyn Pardenilla puts forth a brilliant performance as the long-suffering housekeeper. Her musical acts were breathtaking and her disappointment in her employers was palpable.
There were several small issues with this show. The dubbing of toddler Gus (Connor James) was obvious and poorly done. The transitions between the episodes were sometimes jarring making it seem as if this show was not meant to be binge watched all at once as is so common these days. Some characters are brought into later episodes with no introduction and no hint as to how they are connected to the broader story.
The city of Hong Kong is lovingly captured with lingering shots of winding mountain roads that give glimpses of the city skyline, panoramas through the bus windows, to repeated shots of the Night Market, where the tragedy takes place. Hong Kong truly feels like one of the characters in the show.
I would have preferred to have seen Expats developed with a different first episode and a different actress playing the lead. As it is, I felt little compulsion to continue watching the next episode after each one I finished. The direction was often off-putting, and Kidman’s acting was insufficient to get across the level of Margaret’s grief, which so much of the plot relies upon. The show’s portrayal of horrific tragedy is so mismatched from the day-to-day dramas of the other characters that the viewer experiences a sort of emotional whiplash going from one scene and one episode to the next. This is not a show I will be watching again, nor does it find me hoping for a second season.
