Nine Perfect Strangers Fixed
Nine strangers from the city gather for a 10-day retreat at Tranquillum House, a health and wellness resort in the fictional town of Cabrillo, California,[6] which promises to transform and heal the guests who stay there. The resort is not what it seems to be, and the guests are about to discover many secrets about each other and the resort's host. One of the controversies arising between the guests and resort director Masha starts when she tells them during a meal conducted at a large table that they are all given a psychoactive drug, namely Psylocybin, in very small but relevant doses in their food without their prior consent or even knowledge, about which the guests are upset and assume it to be a crime.
Nine Perfect Strangers
Or maybe it's not a critique at all, but a character study. Masha creepily "curates" attendees at her resort, much like the mysterious host in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. And she's assembled quite the crew. I spent the entirety of the first episode waiting for each of the titular nine strangers to succumb to Christie-style deaths, but no dice.
Tonally, Nine Perfect Strangers is all over the place, a melting pot of comedy, romance, magical realism, horror and suspense. Throughout their stay at Tranquillum, the nine strangers flit through the woods like Hermia and Lysander. They writhe and scream like patients under Nurse Ratched's care. They indulge in desperate credulity like characters in a NXIVM cult docuseries. They bicker and attack each other, they fall in love, they hallucinate, they share deep, dark secrets, they compete in a potato sack race.
The photography and set design are beautiful, and many of the performances are moving -- Bobby Canavale's wounded ex-athlete and Michael Shannon's grieving father are particularly poignant. And Regina Hall clearly understood the assignment with her portrayal of wronged woman Carmel. But the shapelessness of the story and the vagueness of its mysteries give the sense this miniseries was constructed by some sort of algorithm. The cast's clamorous collection of grief, betrayal, commitment phobia, loneliness and professional failure creates a screenwriting challenge that Kelley and team can't quite meet. Perhaps nine perfect strangers is just too many to get to know in a limited run.
The setting is a remote, controversial, new-age spa called Tranquillum House, a California retreat run by a spiritual, mysterious woman named Masha. With a Russian accent, a very slow and deliberate manner of talking and an almost ethereal presence, she's played by Nicole Kidman. It's yet another deep and challenging role she's inhabited since opting to focus on TV miniseries as well as movies. Her other TV work includes not only a previous Moriarty TV adaptation of "Big Little Lies" but also another excellent HBO drama, "The Undoing." But "Nine Perfect Strangers" is more of an ensemble than a solo turn. And the nine strangers gathered by Masha for a concentrated dose of healing and of personal discovery are impeccably cast.
The title characters of Nine Perfect Strangers, who travel to a secluded Northern California wellness resort in search of some sort of healing, aren't just looking for a geographical escape from their lives. Instead, this eclectic assortment of individuals is in search of freedom from the problems which haunt them, a concept captured perfectly in the most memorable lines from the trailer: "I don't want to suffer," Frances (Melissa McCarthy) tells Masha (Nicole Kidman). "You're already suffering," Masha replies.
Carmel, speaking more coherently than she has throughout Nine Perfect Strangers, is leading a support group for women. Ben and Jessica are dressed in white and appear to work at Tranquillum House, welcoming new strangers. In a scene harking back to the season's opening, we see the Marconis in the car together, this time with Heather in the driving seat.
Masha (Maria Dmitrichenko) is now the director of Tranquillum House. She goes through the file of the nine clients who are there for the retreat. Frances, Ben, Jessica, Lars, plus the three Marconis. The last two names are Carmel Schneider, a divorced single mother, and Tony Hogburn, a divorced man who is interested in weight loss. Masha wonders why the Marconis are here.
A Nicole Kidman and David E. Kelley collaboration is enough reason to try a show. After all, the prestige TV duo has already brought us the captivating shows Big Little Lies (opens in new tab) and The Undoing. (opens in new tab) Lucky for us, Hulu's Nine Perfect Strangers (opens in new tab), premiering August 18, has also stacked its cast with a number of beloved actors, including Melissa McCarthy, Regina Hall, and Luke Evans. Nine Perfect Strangers takes its viewers to Tranquillum House, an all-inclusive wellness retreat run by Russian guru Masha (Kidman). Masha has handpicked nine people who all need to heal from inner demons, but as the retreat goes on, the guests realize that Masha's unorthodox methods may mean using those inner demons against them. The ensemble drama has a large cast to keep track of, so here's a rundown on who's who in Nine Perfect Strangers.
"Nine Perfect Strangers," a miniseries adaptation of the Liane Moriarty novel, premiered on August 18 on Hulu. The show stars Nicole Kidman as a wellness retreat host who pushes her nine handpicked guests to their limits.
According to Hulu's website, the miniseries drama -- which is based on a book by the same name, by Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty -- depicts the varying journeys of "nine stressed city dwellers" as they try to transform their lives for the better through a 10-day retreat at a boutique health-and-wellness resort, with Kidman's character as the resort's director.
From the very beginning, Tranquillum House seems a little weird to Frances. Her bags have been searched, with all her emergency wine and chocolate confiscated. She had blood taken as part of a comprehensive medical exam, and she is a little fearful about the upcoming five days of "noble silence" that all the guests must partake in to clear their thoughts. The guests all meet each other and Masha at their guided meditation, which is in a room with no windows or natural light that Frances describes to herself as a "dungeon on an isolated property with a group of strangers, at least one of whom was a serial killer." Although the last bit was definitely an exaggeration (the man was gruff and offered to help her in the midst of one of her hot flashes), it is a bit creepy. Masha lets the guests know that they will be different people when they leave, with unexpected changes and surprises along the way.
The countdown is on for the release of Liane Moriarty's highly-anticipated series, Nine Perfect Strangers, to hit our screens. The series sees a group of strangers put their faith into a wellness retreat, named Tranquillum House, where they express their desire to change their lives for the better, thanks to the deep and dark secrets they all carry.
Depending on whom you ask, alternative medicine is either the secret answer to all that ails us or a multi-billion dollar scam. And now the divisive industry provides the perfect backdrop for Nine Perfect Strangers, the latest David E. Kelley show based on a book by Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies).
As the Tranquillum House guests work through their issues, behind-the-scenes confrontations between Masha, Yao, and Delilah ratchet up the tension and hint that all is far from well in this perfectly cultivated paradise.
Hulu's Nine Perfect Strangers cast features many Hollywood heavy-hitters playing an eclectic group of characters. The series based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty was created by David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies, The Undoing) and John Henry Butterworth. The eight-episode series follows nine guests at a wellness center who turn to an enigmatic spiritual guru in hopes of alleviating their emotional turmoil.
Nine Perfect Strangers is set at Tranquillum House, a California resort with a purpose: to heal the internal suffering of its guests through unconventional methods. Nine guests (not all strangers) aren't just carrying around pain but also secrets, but nobody is more of a mystery than the woman who is the reason they've all come together for the remote retreat. Of course, the smoothies, meditation, and breathtaking scenery are just distractions, and a larger mystery begins to unfold.
As in most stories that bring strangers together on neutral ground, everyone has a secret or three. The trouble is, few of these revelations succeed in building suspense. Early episodes unfold at such a languorous pace that you can forget the story is supposed to have any stakes at all. When they are finally raised to an intriguing degree, in the last of the six episodes (out of eight total) sent for review, it just feels too late to make up so much momentum.
Television revolving around vacations and retreats is having a moment right now, between the class-exposé satire of HBO Max's "The White Lotus," and now, Hulu's "Nine Perfect Strangers," based on the Liane Moriarty novel of the same name. The latest Nicole Kidman mystery follows, well, nine perfect strangers, each with their own demons, arriving at a beautiful but eerie wellness resort, which may or may not be a cult run by Kidman's enigmatic Masha Dmitrichenko.
Well, the "nine perfect strangers" of the title is a little deceptive, because some of the characters in this story know each other from the beginning. Nevertheless, this listen follows nine guests who all go on a 10-day retreat to the Tranquillum House, a health and wellness resort that promises to transform everyone who stays there. Every guest has different reasons for wanting to come to the resort. Some are looking to relax. Some want to lose weight. Others are trying to deal with grief, while still others are struggling with addiction. But the longer the guests stay at the Tranquillum House, the more they begin to realize that this place is not at all what it seems. 041b061a72