“MAID” the new Netflix Limited Series to hit the streamer over the weekend and quickly entered Netflix’s Top 10 List, standing out as one of the most-watched series and movies on the site over the weekend.
Trailer:
The Limited Series is based on the New York Times best-selling memoir of the same name, published by Stephanie Land in 2019. The rights to the adaptation were quickly snatched up by LuckyChap Entertainment, Margot Robbie’s Production Company responsible for 2020’s break-out success, “Promising Young Woman.” With Robbie at the helm of the project as Executive Producer, the series covers a young, single-mom’s will to survive, against all odds.
In her first lead role, Margaret Qualley plays Alex, a recently single-mother who has fled her home and boyfriend, Sean (Nick Robinson), due to psychological abuse. Stranded and struggling to find a house, a job and a sense of security, she seeks help from social services. With nowhere else to go and frightened to return home, Alex and her daughter, Maddy, seek shelter at a domestic violence center as she levels with her current situation.
Without any familial support, besides her mother, played by Qualley’s real-life mother, Andie MacDowell, who is an un-diagnosed bi-polar, Alex is the only person who can count of to pull her and her daughter out of their own circumstances. Seeking immediate employment, Alex takes a job as a maid, cleaning other people’s houses for less than minimum wage. The work is relentless and back-breaking and requires Alex to be off site and away from her daughter for almost six hours a day.
The show touches on sensitive, yet important subject-matter, but feels rather long at times. The 10-Episode Mini-Series may have been more effective in a movie format, or even with fewer episodes. By the time you reach Episode 5, you start to feel a sense of déjà vu. Alex’s life consistently met with roadblocks whether is being force to move from her temporary housing due to black mold, her ex-boyfriend filing a lawsuit for full custody, being evicted from her first apartment, getting into a car crash that totals her car…. the string of catastrophes seems un-ending and at times un-watchable at times.
The finale of the 10-episode series makes the entire show worth it. Best over-the-top acting performance would have to go to Andie MacDowell who feels almost cartoonish, playing Alex’s bi-polar mother. Still, overall a great story about perseverance, that is, if you have the attention span to sit through all 10-episodes, probably guessing that this story is going to have a happy ending.
Margot Robbie’s Production Company, LuckyChap Entertainment, is going to become a pretty popular studio if things go similarly to Hello Sunshine Studios from Reese Witherspoon. Dedicated to telling stories with women at the forefront, here is another project that has just been optioned and is coming soon:
Boston Stranglers: According to Deadline, Keira Knightley is set to star in the new Drama about the true story of the Boston Strangler. The adaptation will focus specifically on Loretta McLaughlin, the first reporter to connect the murders and break the story. Told through the women’s perspective, the adaptation is set to tackle sexism in the 1960s as McLaughlin (Knightley) and fellow journalists use the newspaper media to inform women and seek to catch the notorious killer. More to come here as the story just broke yesterday!
And that’s the sitch.
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