Olive Kitteridge is a woman who finds her intelligence and perceptions of the world around her weigh heavily. Played outstandingly by Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand, Olive swings between wicked and worried, warm and harsh. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Elizabeth Strout, this two-part miniseries tells a story spanning 25 years, weaving together tales from various members of a seemingly placid New England town, which is in fact rampant with illicit affairs, crime, and tragedy. They're all linked by Olive, who winds her way through life with an acerbic tongue, a troubled heart, and a staunch moral centre.
The series tells of her work as a middle-school maths teacher, her relationship with her husband Henry (Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins), who is a good-humoured town pharmacist, their son Christopher (John Gallagher jnr of The Newsroom and Short Term 12) who finds her motherly skills wanting, and a whole host of intriguing characters played by a star cast including Rosemarie DeWitt, Peter Mullan, Bill Murray, and Zoe Kazan.
Her abrasive, scornful, deeply negative attitude reigns throughout, and there is a heaviness to the themes tackled - depression, adultery, suicide - but somehow director Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon, The Kids Are Alright) manages to imbue the show with unexpected, if occasionally bleak, humour, and a surprising hopefulness.
When: Thursday, 8.30pm
Where: SoHo
What: Embracing negativity
- TimeOut
