'Little Disasters' Fremantle Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Suspicions of Paramount's corporate ideological leanings are unlikely to be abated by Little Disasters: The new Paramount+ limited series boasts one of the most demonstrably anti-vax screen protagonists in recent memory, folding distrust of the medical establishment into a bigger conversation about how it's bad to be judgmental of other people's parenting styles. To be fair, Little Disasters is never really a political treatise of any kind, and for at least three of six episodes, the show's pragmatism when it comes to the main characters' imperfections is interesting and even entertaining. Still, by the fifth and sixth episodes, which turn several key figures into villainous caricatures and resolve the season-long mystery in cartoonishly unconvincing fashion, I was pondering what, if anything, the show was trying to say. The conclusion I came to was: "Nothing particularly perceptive." Related Stories TV How to Stream 'South Park' Season 28 Finale, the Annual Christmas Episode Business Paramount+ Becomes Official Partner of English Soccer Club Arsenal Little Disasters The Bottom Line Intriguing build-up, flat follow-through. Airdate: Thursday, December 11 (Paramount+)Cast: Diane Kruger, Jo Joyner, Shelley Conn, Emily Taaffe and JJ FieldAdapted By: Ruth Fowler and Amanda Duke Still, this will probably appeal to some viewers who have flocked to thematically and titularly similar shows, in which the diminutive "little" was applied to such things as lies that are actually big and fires that are actually everywhere. Adapted by Ruth Fowler and Amanda Duke from the book by Sarah Vaughan, the series is focused on an octet of friends who met as part of a parenting class - "antenatal" in the charming British parlance - and became close over a decade. There are shades of Netflix's The Four Seasons in the sense of "Wait, don't these people have any friends they DIDN'T meet in this random group 10 years ago?" But don't worry about that. These three couples have dinners together, take vacations together, parent on the sidelines of their kids' soccer leagues together, etc. The relationships, already put to the test by a particularly suspenseful week in Provence the previous year, are pushed to the brink when Jess (Diane Kruger) arrives in the emergency room - or "Accident & Emergency" in the charming British parlance - with her 10-month-old daughter Betsy. Betsy won't stop crying and Jess is freaking out, getting more harried when the doctor on duty turns out to be Liz (Jo Joyner), another member of the antenatal friend circle. Liz finds that Betsy has a skull fracture that doesn't line up with Jess' story about the night in question, and additional oddities pop up, leaving Liz with a choice: call child services or take her friend at her word. When she opts for the former, tensions grow, especially in the friendship between the two women. Jess' shifting story is just one of several strange details, including the question of where husband Ed (JJ Feild), a gruff and burly finance something-or-other, is and why Jess hasn't contacted him at all. That all forces a grand revelation to occur at the birthday party for Jess' middle kid, Frankie (Jax James), who everybody theorizes is on the spectrum - but nobody would know because Jess only believes in medical treatment under certain extreme circumstances. As the police and social services investigate, all the members of the friend group become involved, including Charlotte (Shelley Conn), a type-A lawyer married to innocuously bland Andrew (Patrick Baladi) in general economic comfort, and quirky Mel (Emily Taaffe), who lives with unemployed partner Rob (Stephen Campbell Moore) in less economic comfort. I guess I could mention that Liz's husband is Nick (Ben Bailey Smith), but the show sometimes forgets he exists, though he seems nice. "Seems" is the key word, not as it relates necessarily just to Nick, but to the entire group. The show is about how you should never assume you know anybody or anything based on first or even second impressions. Charlotte, Liz and Mel get to speak directly to the camera, an inconsistently useful device that lets them opine, over and over again, things like "I forgot that perfection is an illusion, something created, filtered and tweaked. And then something happens, some tiny mishap, some little disaster." Jess looks, on the surface, like a perfect mother, the mother whose attentiveness makes the other mothers feel insecure and judged - with the series reminding us over and over again that these flash judgments are often incorrect, and that nobody is judged incorrectly more often than mothers. "Every mother faces constant judgement," a character observes. "The way we parent. The choices