All Her Fault

The series juggles a lot without slowing down or losing momentum. Even as we ponder the who and why behind Milo’s kidnapping, the tension crackling and escalating between Marissa’s family, as well as her colleague and friend Colin (Jay Ellis), keeps us riveted.

All Her Fault is compulsively watchable, worthy of the type of binge that carves a dent into your couch cushions.

Like any mystery worth its salt, All Her Fault does eventually get to a point where we know everything there is to know, and exactly where to place our blame. Its touch of savvy is understanding how easily blame can be dropped on some people or deflected by others, and why we’re so eager to cast it in the first place.

“All My Fault” shines most as an adrenaline-filled psychological thriller full of jaw-dropping twists and turns. Its multiple storylines also add gambling, extortion, corruption and murder to the mix.

The themes in “All Her Fault” are orchestrated with precision. The first comes from the myriad ways the women in the show are blamed for any and everything. Of course, it helps that the cast has firepower.

There are many strong performances here; Elliott, Peña and Lillis are particularly good. There are weaker ones, too, partly as a function of the writing; a few characters remain one-dimensional. But the pacing is terrific, and the miniseries understands its genre well, deftly deploying the viewer’s own fluency in narrative conventions against them. “All her Fault” is a tense, entertaining watch.

Despite the increasingly convoluted ways that characters in "All Her Fault" mete out information, the emotional core of the series is extremely strong, bolstered by Snook's reliably excellent central performance as a mother desperate to find her beloved son.

An immediate win for the show is that it eliminates at least a couple of convoluted storylines from the source material. Still, All Her Fault, which was created by Lazarus and Suspicion writer Megan Gallagher, can’t resist giving in to certain trappings that make it frequently tedious. .... But as a character study of the three women and the pressures they’re under—whether internal or external—All Her Fault succeeds just enough to keep you invested.

The soapiest of TV affairs, its every twist and turn so outlandish that each surprise elicits a hearty chuckle.

These rich folk are hiding scandalous secrets – some that don’t make much sense upon closer inspection. That illogic is part of the guilty fun of “All Her Fault,” which provides a decent enough diversion along the lines of Netflix’s equally star-studded bit of domestic thriller ridiculousness “The Perfect Couple.”

There’s nothing actually wrong with All Her Fault. But we’re just so tired of these kinds of thrillers that we just don’t have the energy to spare watching rich people in nice kitchens trying to keep their secrets from getting out.

“Apples Never Fall” had a breeziness that’s sorely lacking in “All Her Fault,” which doesn’t land any incisive points about parenting, class, codependency or hired child care but does get bogged down trying to make them.

Snook and Fanning deliver memorable and strong performances, but they can't save a series that's a bit too smug about its gotcha moments and less concerned about weaving a compelling narrative with innovative ideas.

Not subtle, sure — but also, kind of fun? It is for a while, at least, before an overextended story runs out of steam and the delayed answers stretch themselves silly to emphasize a point made patently clear from the start.

Aside from the commentaries on modern motherhood and all the “help” one might get while doing it wrongly, it is pretty farfetched; trying to detail the plotline makes one realize how outlandish it is. But this makes Michael Peña’s contribution as Detective Alcaras all the more refreshing. While Marissa and Peter pivot between rage and not-quite-mourning, and other characters are perpetrating cooked-up complications to the story, Alcaras conducts an investigation that is so commonsensical it defies the rules of crime fiction.

Snook is fantastic as Marissa, delivering complicated anguish in a series of chunky knits. Fanning’s Jenny, trying to secure a new whale of a client for her publishing company while her feckless husband perpetually clocks out of activities with their son, is also compelling to watch, particularly when Jenny and Marissa find ways to bolster each other. Nevertheless, All Her Fault starts floundering midway through and never quite finds its footing again.