Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Undoing’ On HBO, Where A Murder Rocks Nicole Kidman And Hugh Grant’s Idyllic Marriage

Can’t get enough of stories about rich white families torn asunder by people from the working class? Think two seasons of Big Little Lies and one season of Little Fires Everywhere wasn’t enough? Then do we have a show for you! The Undoing just arrived on HBO, led by BLL’s Nicole Kidman and the ever-droll Hugh Grant. And, yes, it’s about a rich white family that’s disrupted by someone from the working class. Want to know more? Read on…

THE UNDOING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A boy in a school uniform runs to his mother’s art studio, opens it with a key, and then there’s a shocked and anguished look on his face.

The Gist: Flash to two days earlier, in the well-appointed townhouse of the Fraser family. Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman) is a therapist and the daughter of the wealthy philanthropist Franklin Reinhardt (Donald Sutherland); Jonathan Fraser (Hugh Grant) is an oncologist at the top of his profession. Their son Henry (Noah Jupe) goes to Reardon, a top private school in Manhattan. After a couple of decades of marriage, the two seem to be still deeply in love and attracted to each other, and the ever-introverted Jonathan would rather quip his way through social engagements rather than talk to people.

During a meeting with other Reardon mothers, who have squeezed in time to put together an auction to raise money for scholarships, a woman named Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis) joins the group, infant in tow. Brought to the group by high-powered executive Sylvia Steineitz (Lily Rabe), it’s obvious she’s not from the same moneyed circles as the others; she has two kids and no daycare. She even pulls out her breast to feed her baby, right in the middle of the meeting, and Grace is the only one not offended. The next day, Grace encounters Elena in the gym locker room; stark naked, she thanks Grace for being kind to her during the meeting. Grace, for her part, is gracious but a little weirded out by how free Elena is with her body.

During the black-tie auction, Elena comes by herself and gets a lot of attention from men; Grace encounters her in the bathroom, and Elena says she’s overwhelmed by, well, pretty much everything. Grace offers her help, offers a ride, and seems very concerned. But Elena leaves early. So does Jonathan, paged by the hospital about a patient (who doesn’t make it). The next morning he’s on his way to a conference in Cleveland.

The next morning, during a tense couples therapy session with clients, she gets a text from the school. It turns out that Elena was found shot to death by her son Miguel (Edan Alexander) in her art studio. Aside from the shock of it, she gets a lot of questions from NYPD detectives Joe Mendoza (Edgar Ramírez) and Paul O’Rourke (Michael Devine). Sylvia says Elena’s husband Fernando (Ismael Cruz Cordova) is a person of interest. “It’s always the fucking husband,” she says. But, as Grace tries to get in touch with Jonathan in Cleveland, she discovers something that will send her mind reeling in many different directions.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though it’s based on a whole different novel (You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz), it’s undeniable that The Undoing feels like an east coast version of Big Little Lies, with maybe some story elements of Little Fires Everywhere mixed in. We’re surprised Reese Witherspoon isn’t involved in this show at all.

Our Take: Comparing The Undoing to BLL is pretty much inevitable, given Kidman’s involvement and the fact that the show is written by BLL’s David E. Kelley (Susanne Bier is also an EP and directs all six episodes). But the comparisons go deeper than that; it’s about rich white people living privileged lives that are torn apart by the introduction into their circle of someone who isn’t of their status. Only here, that person is murdered in the first episode, and as the Fraser family increasingly gets the attention of the authorities for Jonathan’s possible involvement, that’s when the idyllic family Kidman’s character thought she had gets upended.

But, lord, the two shows feel interchangeable in every other way. We have the coterie of Reardon moms, all professionals, who can’t help but gossip about each other and the “weird” new mom in their midst — Sylvia didn’t like seeing Elena just staring at the school from a bench across the street after dropping her son off. All of the people natter about penthouse apartments and the Hockneys on display. Jonathan and Franklin seem to have a tense relationship for no apparent reason.

Yes, the focus of the series will be Jonathan being accused of Elena’s murder, and a lot of it will be reconstructed via flashback. And this time around, Kidman doesn’t play a victim of domestic violence who is just striving to get her power back. But her world is still rocked and her marriage upended via behavior that neither she nor the people in her circle of friends expected. One of her friends, Sally Morrison (Janel Moloney) says, “Seriously, staring down cancer in children every day and maintaining his sense of humor the whole time? I don’t know how he does it.” So that’s the baseline of where Grace’s marriage is, giving it a jumping off point for the shock of what comes next.

Kidman and Grant are fantastic, as you’d expect. It’s refreshing to see Kidman’s character start from strength instead of weakness, and that power is evident in her performance. Grant is his usual dry, quippy self, which makes us think Kelley adapted the character from the book to suit Grant’s “charming cad” style; there’s a scene where Jonathan closes an elevator on some approaching party guests simply because he doesn’t want to talk to them, and we laughed hard at that.

But do we really need another HBO “limited series” about rich white people with lives that aren’t what they seem? We got two seasons of BLL. This feels redundant, at least at the start. Maybe things will change as the six episodes progress. But we’re not sure they will

Sex and Skin: Jonathan suggests some shower nookie, but for the most part the only nudity are from the scenes where Elena is very free with her body.

Parting Shot: Grace texts Jonathan, and hears buzzing. She looks in his nightstand and finds his phone. Then she calls around to different Hyatts in Cleveland, based on his quip about bonus points, and finds he’s not in any of them. She wonders just what the hell is going on as we see flashes of Elena’s bloody body.

Sleeper Star: We’re happy to see Donald Sutherland in anything new these days, and we’re curious to see how his influential character will be involved in the story.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s an extended scene where Grace pegs one of her more difficult clients as someone who jumps at any man who pays her attention, despite being meticulous in the rest of her life. Is this supposed to show how keen of a therapist she is? It was just unnecessary. Also, we don’t need multiple clients telling her how expensive she is. That sounds like it comes from the textbook for Therapist Jokes 101.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite Kidman’s and Grant’s performances, we couldn’t muster up enough energy to care about anyone in The Undoing, at least not enough to spend six hours unraveling its central mystery. It’s certainly watchable, but having this show come so soon after BLL makes it feel like we’ve seen it all before.

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 The Undoing On HBO Max

Stream The Undoing On HBO Now