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- Prime Video
- Jan 25, 2024
- Prime Video
- Jan 25, 2024
- Prime Video
- Jan 25, 2024
- Prime Video
- Jan 25, 2024
Expats
Season 1
Season Premiere: Jan 25, 2024
73
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 20 Critic Reviews
73
70% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
30% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 20 Critic Reviews
73
70% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
30% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Wang makes it easy to see how individuals connect to a family, how families connect to a community, and how communities connect to society at large. Sometimes, it can be difficult to recognize how our personal motivations affect other people, especially when catastrophes feel big enough to overwhelm everything else, but “Expats” expertly breaks life down into parts, before bringing it all together again in a moving, unshakable portrait.
“Expats” is a deeply nuanced and dark narrative about the things women sweep under the rug, and what happens when they become too weary to cover them up.
Expats is an unusual beast. Its deliberately piecemeal approach makes it seems unlikely that Wang will offer us a neat and tidy ending, preferring instead to present a tale that is frequently hard to pin down. Which, for a story about people far from home, might be precisely the point.
The middle hours of Expats hit the most roadblocks—after a flashback second episode neatly and carefully laying down all the tension bubbling up in the first, the show spins wheels in too obvious ways, the lowest point being a fourth episode where all our characters are trapped in single locations and are forced to directly and ineffectively voice their trauma. It’s imperfections like these that chip away at Expats’ merits, giving us a worthy but imperfect next step in Wang’s career.
Maybe Lulu Wang’s six-part series is hell on short attention spans, but hang on for a transfixing Nicole Kidman— leading a superb cast playing expats in Hong Kong with servants they barely see—who tears everyone’s lives apart when her youngest son goes missing.
This is not a missing-child mystery, and like life, the series doesn’t offer viewers clear resolutions or easy closure. Oddly enough, that may be the most cohesive thing about Expats, which feels, in the end, like many separate stories looking for a home.
A viewer may be inclined to blame the relentless tone of misery on the script, and there's plenty in it to earn blame. But the actors are an unpleasant group to hang out with, having apparently been directed by Ms. Wang to give everything from a Chinese crackdown to a crack in a ceiling (a metaphor for Hong Kong's collapsing independence, one presumes) the same emotional weight. When everything is treated as a tragedy, everything becomes trivial, which is not a bad description of "Expats."
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