Nicole Kidman’s Brilliant ‘Expats’ Taps Into What Made ‘Big Little Lies’ Great

Nicole Kidman has spent the last few weeks teasing a third season of Big Little Lies, but her next tour-de-force drama series may already be here. The star’s latest high-stakes TV mystery has arrived, with shades of Nine Perfect Strangers, The Undoing, and yes, even a bit of Big Little Lies. Although her newest miniseries, Expats is a darker tale than all three of these dramas, it continues to present Kidman as one of the most gripping actresses in TV—if not the most gripping.

Expats, streaming now on Prime Video, is an adaptation of Janice Y. K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates. Created by The Farewell’s Lulu Wang, the series follows a tense community of expatriates living in Hong Kong, as well as the “helpers” (from drivers and cleaners to nannies and tutors) who make their lives livable. Although slow at certain points, Expats is otherwise exactly what we’ve come to expect from a Kidman-led drama: It’s full of twists, complex female characters, and an engrossing enigma of a plot.

The multiple stories of Expats are told somewhat out of order. Although each individual episode follows a chronological timeline, we begin the series at the end, when everything has fallen apart. The mystery, then, is figuring out just exactly how the chaos began. As confusing as that may sound, it’s fairly easy to follow. We begin in medias res, where Margaret (Kidman) resides in Hong Kong with her two kids because her sweet, dutiful husband Clarke (Brian Tee) has accepted a yearlong job offer in the region. She’s friends with fellow expat Hilary (Sarayu Blue), who has had some kind of falling-out with her husband David (Jack Huston).

(Warning: Slight spoilers for the first two episodes of Expats follow.)

Although they all have drama amongst themselves, the group shares a common enemy in Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a young woman who resides in the helpers side of the expat economy. She is somehow connected with Hilary and has had a life-altering effect on Margaret—who shakes with fear and anger when she sees Mercy in the first episode—but the series waits until Episode 2 to reveal this link. There, the truth comes out: Margaret tried to hire Mercy as a nanny for her kids, but during Mercy’s first trial evening on the job, she accidentally lost Margaret’s youngest son, Gus, in a night market. When the series starts, Gus has yet to be found.

This framing is a bold new take on the mystery format, and for the most part, it works. The characters already know everything that has happened before now, while the audience is left to solve the puzzle. But even if we did know the whole story from the start, both the story and the juxtaposition between these two groups of people (the wealthy visitors and their local helpers) are thrilling enough to watch play out on its own.

Expats is only six episodes long; the first two premiered together, with the remaining four rolling out weekly. But each installment is quite lengthy. The show moves at a slow pace, taking time to really live with the characters as their pristine lives unravel, which can get a bit tedious. These lagging moments—watching the characters try to force their children to eat, or slowly coming to terms with their new lives, far from their closest allies—are purposeful. But there are so many that they drag the show down.

That said, the feature-length fifth episode, which portrays only the helpers’ side of the world, is unhurried while still managing to be absorbing. Expats is not just any mystery show: Wang’s take on the source material has quite a bit to say about the various complexities of Hong Kong’s culture, as well as expatriate lifestyles in general. The fifth episode, which dares to put Kidman in a corner to allow some newer stars to take the spotlight, uses its runtime to fully explore this; it’s the crux of the series.

Still, this won’t be the first review—nor the last—to praise Kidman in particular. But it must be said: She’s an absolute revelation as Margaret. Insecure about her living situation but confident about her wealth, emotional but never over-the-top, understated but powerful, Margaret has a handful of intricacies that Kidman perfectly balances. Her subtle work pairs perfectly with Wang’s directorial abilities. Blue and Yoo, the other two women at the lead of the series, are equally formidable as the women who challenge, support, and serve as foils for Margaret.

Expats is an unsettling, innovative mystery-drama with yet another pitch-perfect performance from Kidman, who also shares center stage with a handful of equally dazzling stars—especially Ruby Ruiz, who appears as Margaret’s main helper. There’s the usual glossy sheen of wealth—which never fails to make a thrilling story more gossipy and fun to watch—as well as a reckoning of sorts. A dark and unfettered look at what it means to be an outsider, Expats is thought-provoking from start to finish.