Little Disasters

Overall, though, "Little Disasters" manages to turn a complicated narrative into a cohesive and thought-provoking story about the importance of maternal mental health.

Any mother with a newborn will feel like they’ve stepped into their worst nightmare when watching this well-done Paramount+ six part series based on Sarah Vaughan’s novel.

Little Disasters has some annoying “perfect family with secrets” tropes, and uses some irritating narrative devices like foruth-wall-breaking snippets and narration. However, we liked the exploration of this unlikely friendship between a medical skeptic and a doctor, and how their differences end up threatening one of their families.

Little Disasters is a pretty good show. Yes, most of its plot and themes could have been coughed up by an AI trained on the past decade’s worth of domestic thriller television. And its biggest twist seems highly unlikely. But for the most part, the six-part series’ economical storytelling, richly developed characters, and relatively understated performances prove that smart execution can refresh even the stalest subgenre.

Although Little Disasters is compelling throughout, the decision to sporadically incorporate a breaking of the fourth wall is pointless in the grand scheme of things. .... These fourth-wall instances play out as redundant and unnecessary dramatic fare.

Unsurprisingly, “Little Disasters” doesn’t transcend what it’s so plainly inspired by. Nor does the plot’s most fascinating tension, between vaccine skeptic Jess and her doctor friend Liz (Jo Joyner) — who naturally just so happens to be on duty when Jess turns up at the ER — pay off in a satisfying way as the mystery gets resolved in the six-episode series’ final moments.

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.”

Sudsy beyond belief, it’s another tale of upper-middle-class dysfunction, and one whose twists and turns are almost as laughable as its climactic value judgments.

The show is the most palatable of binges, the kind where the stakes are high-ish but not completely devastating. And the series treads that line of not upsetting anyone too much. It fosters concern, sure, but does not create attachment to its characters or story. .... But implausibility unfortunately hovers over this show.