HBO’s relationship with author Tom Perrotta began with the Damon Lindelof executive produced adaptation of his novel The Leftovers. Perrotta joined Lindelof in the writers’ room and as a producer on the show, which lasted for three seasons, expanding well beyond the story laid out in the novel to become one of the best series on the premium cabler in recent years. Since then, the network has smartly opted to work with Lindelof and Perrotta again, albeit on two wildly different series: the recently premiered Watchmen and the upcoming Mrs. Fletcher.
Both are adaptations, but while Lindelof is stepping into the fire with his sequel/remix of the smartly subversive graphic novel from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Perrotta is staying closer to home, choosing to adapt his own novel of the same name, published by Scribner in 2017. This time, Perrotta is serving as his own executive producer, turning the 309-page novel into a 7-episode limited (we’ll see) series, starring the always excellent Kathryn Hahn as the titular Mrs. Fletcher, a forty-something divorced single mother who embarks on a sexual reawakening of sorts, soon after she sends her son Brendan (Jackson White) off to college.
What begins as a story of empty-nest syndrome soon becomes one of second chances, as Eve quickly finds that, without a surly teenager in her home, she’s free to do whatever she pleases. As it turns out, that means satisfying certain personal urges and exploring her sexuality in a way she never thought to or had time for before. The result is a sweet, funny, sexually frank (bordering on raunchy at times) limited series, energized by a bold and endearing performance from Hahn that captures the vulnerability and empowerment of a middle-aged woman on the verge of beginning a new, hopefully more fulfilling life.
The series gets an extra push in the right direction with a premiere directed by Nicole Holofcener, who skillfully juggles the necessary exposition and character introductions, while also establishing a tonal baseline that makes the most of the story’s inherent humor, its melancholy, and its more explicit content. Perrotta’s script for the premiere hews remarkably close to his novel, though the episode benefits greatly from a number of unspoken grace notes in the performances and Holofcener’s perceptive direction. Case in point: an early exchange between Eve and Brendan regarding a celebratory/goodbye dessert she bought and his blinkered teenage self-absorption shrewdly illustrates the emotional inequality in their relationship.
The audience’s perception of Brendan is worsened at the party he attends in lieu of celebrating with his mother, with a short but effective depiction of the kind of guy he is, one who views women primarily as objects — as seen in his exchange with a young woman he broke up with over the summer, only to try and rekindle their relationship on the night before he leaves for college — and in his decision to continue bullying Julian (Owen Teague), a former classmate who’s none too fond of Mrs. Fletcher’s baby boy.
Mrs. Fletcher has an enormous amount of forward momentum that’s certainly due to the text it’s drawn from and how deeply involved the author is in adapting his own work. And although it delivers a lively, serialized narrative, the series also excels at delivering episodes with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, effectively breaking the story down to seven chapters, each clocking in at about 30 minutes a piece. The effect, then, is HBO delivers an adult comedic drama that exemplifies the old entertainment adage of “leave them wanting more.”
Hahn shoulders most of the responsibility of making the series work. Through her performance, Eve reveals herself to be a charming and attractive character, with a laundry list of personal disappointments and foibles that somehow make her even more engaging. She tolerates her philandering ex-husband, Dave (Josh Hamilton), as well as his new family, and attempts to encourage Brendan to respect women — after accidentally overhearing his regrettable choice of words while receiving a, well, farewell gift from his ex-girlfriend — before developing an irresistible fascination with online pornography.
It’s the beginning of a turning point for Eve, one that sees her fantasy life encroach on her real life in ways that, refreshingly, don’t attempt to classify her rekindled interest in sex and nascent interest pornography as aberrant or in need of moralizing. Instead, the series becomes a fun and fulfilling exploration of Eve’s new life on her own (sexual and otherwise), one that doesn’t look down its nose at the notion of second chances but also doesn’t sugarcoat them either.
Ostensibly a double narrative told from both Eve’s and Brendan’s perspectives, Mrs. Fletcher delivers plenty of humor and pathos, as its primary protagonists find themselves on divergent paths of self discovery. The schadenfreude of Brendan’s freshman struggles to fit in at a socially conscious campus, where his bro-y-ness puts him in an unfamiliar and marginalized position, is undercut by the series’ ability to make Brendan into something more complicated and interesting than a hastily doodled composite of privileged frat boy excess. In doing so, Mrs. Fletcher introduces Jasmine Cephas Jones as Chloe, a student whose relationship with Brendan soon becomes more fraught with issues of boundaries and miscommunication the closer they become.
But it’s the attention the series pays to Eve, as she too struggles to navigate certain boundaries in her newly expansive social life, that ultimately makes Mrs. Fletcher a pleasure to watch. And it’s how Perrotta and his team convincingly deliver a confident, funny, and captivating limited series that’s refreshingly candid about its subject and adventurous in its depiction of a woman finding — through fits and starts — the life she wants for herself.
Mrs. Fletcher premieres Sunday, October 27 @10:30pm on HBO.