People with money have everything

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021

#21 : Maid

A devastating and compelling portrait of life on the poverty line in the US, starring Rylea Nevaeh Whittet, the cutest child actor in years, as Maddy, Margaret Qualley as Alex, a woman willing to do anything for her family – and her real-life mother Andie MacDowell (the strongest she’s ever been) playing her gullible, free-spirited artist mum Paula. Right up there with Squid Game for word-of-mouth hit of the year.

I'd not heard of this - so it's word-of-mouth-hitness wasn't quite up there with Squid Game, but I was happy to give it a go.

And ten minutes in, it's really clear it's not going to be a laugh - Alex leaves her other half in the dead of night which pretty much nothing other than her three year old.  And if you've got nothing, then getting or doing anything is somewhat tricky - as is looking after a three year old.

And, oh dear.  With "somewhat tricky" we hit a bit of a personal problem - I'm just not good with good people being in hopeless situations.  Like really not good - particularly when I can just tell that there's going to be a lot of false hope involved.  I watched the first half of the first episode and found there was loads to admire (more on this later) but just couldn't bring myself to watch any more, despite trying several times over a long period - so I've just had to admit defeat.  However, it's a defeat I accept whilst thoroughly recommending others to give it a go (and hopefully do better than I did).

The acting is very high quality - Margaret Qualley puts in a great shift as Alex and her relationship with her mum is (understandably) pretty believable but also very relatable in terms of the love and frustration involved.  And Rylea Nevaeh Whittet as Maddy, her daughter, is indeed undeniably cute - but cute in a "cute child" as opposed to a "cute child actor" kinda way (although I appreciate I didn't really have time to see whether she crossed over the line).

As well as the high quality character portrayal, it's beautifully shot with a number of impressive visual touches thrown in - at one point there's a rolling total displaying the amount of money in Alex's purse as she buys stuff she needs for her job and it's funny how tense and affecting just showing some numbers can be.  Another bit done really well is where she has to throw out a load of food when she's starving and there are fantasy sequences of her just stuffing her face with it - and then we just cut back to her sadly chucking it all in the bin.

All in all, I'd like to watch this but I'm just too much of a soft touch - it's funny what gets to people, but this really got to me.  If you're looking something well acted and challenging, then this certainly comes highly recommended and there was nothing I saw which would make me disagree with that - so feel free to check it out and let me know what I'm missing :-)

#20 - TLDR
#22 - Essential telly imho