Source : the age
Nine Perfect Strangers (season two) ★★
Is it ever a good idea for a TV series to expand a story beyond its source material? I’m looking at The Handmaid’s Tale, but now I’m also pointedly scowling at this second season of Nine Perfect Strangers, which imagines a scenario that didn’t exist in Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel. That story focused on a “wellness retreat” for people looking to heal trauma through psychedelic-assisted therapy. Things did not go well, due to the retreat’s director/cult leader Masha (Nicole Kidman with a wildly inconsistent Russian accent) and her loose idea of consent.
Nicole Kidman as Masha, with her designer magic mushroom collection receptacle in Nine Perfect Strangers.Credit: Disney
After the original adaptation’s ambiguous ending, all we really learnt was that Masha had escaped prison and was still getting high on her own supply. But now, unfortunately, we are privy to what Masha does next.
This new season opens with her as a guest speaker at a “disruptors conference”, where she’s introduced as a woman whose name has become synonymous with psychedelic therapy, and the subject of a bestselling book called – yes – Nine Perfect Strangers.
She’s there to discuss her new “psychedelic delivery system” that allows patients to revisit formative memories “as if for the first time”. It’s unclear how, but this will apparently help people move past their trauma.
Masha ends up back at the place where she first learnt about these therapies, in a mansion in the picturesque Austrian alps, which can only be reached by funicular. It’s a spectacular setting, and, along with generous production design and costume budgets, mercifully helps take your mind off what’s going on in the foreground.
Not even the fabulous Murray Bartlett can save the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers.Credit: Disney
Masha is working with Martin (Lucas Anglander), the son of her mentor, Helena, who isn’t convinced Masha’s new therapy has been adequately tested but has been cajoled into it, in part because of the debts hanging over him.
Nine people have signed up for Masha’s new “wellness retreat”, and each have their own issues. There’s Brian (Murray Bartlett), a former kids’ TV host; Dolly de Leon as Agnes, a nun; Imogen (Annie Murphy), who had planned to meet her mother, Victoria (a high-camp Christine Baranski) there, but finds Victoria has turned up with a new, much younger lover, Matteo (Aras Aydin); Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) and her girlfriend, Tina (singer King Princess); and Peter (Harry Golding) and his famous billionaire father, David (Mark Strong).
The list of “do not reveal” character (and plot) points for reviewers is lengthy, making it difficult to reveal much, but suffice to say, except perhaps Agnes, all these guests are, again, extremely privileged. And the terrific ensemble is wasted – in both senses of the word; the amount of ’shrooms ingested far outweighs what went down in the original, and the dialogue is even more silly.
Masha spends a lot of time sashaying around in designer knitwear, espousing dubious neurological “facts” and mangling the odd metaphor, while Martin frets and the guests divulge secrets while “tripping balls” and having the odd epiphany.
Aside from some adolescent-level commentary about wealth and privilege, there’s not a lot going on here (not even a decent skewering of the wellness industry), aside from giving the real psychedelic therapy industry a bad name.
And the worst of all? The finale leaves the action wide open for another season. Pass me the psilocybin.
