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It might be hard to believe, but the first season of Nine Perfect Strangers debuted on Hulu in August of 2021. Yes, just three months short of four long years ago. But, given how, like the similar series The White Lotus, a mostly-new group of characters are introduced each season, the long gap likely doesn’t matter all that much. It’s also likely that the show’s inherent “meh”-ness made most people forget all about what happened in Season 1.
NINE PERFECT STRANGERS SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman) listens and breathes as she’s introduced for a speaking engagement at a Bloomberg Disrupters event.
The Gist: Masha is introduced as a disruptor because she’s teamed with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to create a device that will help patients relive formative events of their lives. It’s a device she’s only tested on rats and herself. She claims doesn’t see her dead daughter anymore, even though she totally does.
Martin (Lucas Englander), a biochemist who works with Masha’s mentor Helena (Lena Olin) says that Helena’s Alpine retreat, Zauberwald, could use some cash and having Masha practicing there will attract customers. It will also help Masha get away from the lawsuits that she is constantly being served.
Sometime later, we see Masha — complete with severe new haircut — picking mushrooms in the snowy Bavarian Alps, working with Helena and Martin. New cameras have been installed around the extensive property, so Masha can see how people are reacting before, during and after her sessions.
Arriving at Zauberwald are Imogen (Annie Murphy), who wants to work out her issues with her mother Victoria (Christine Baranski), a frequent customer at the resort, but is dismayed when Victoria arrives with Matteo (Aras Aydin), her latest boy toy. Peter (Henry Golding) is there to try to reconcile with his evil billionaire father David (Mark Strong), but David hasn’t even bothered to show up yet.
Brian (Murray Bartlett) is so high-strung that any interruption of his thought process makes him snap. He hands his luggage to Agnes (Dolly De Leon), a well-known former nun, not realizing she’s a guest, not an employee. Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) is there to get her girlfriend Tina (King Princess) to play the piano again, which is important because they are both musicians. But she has to lie to Tina about what’s going to happen to even get her to the resort.
While Helena and Martin aren’t comfortable with how Masha wants to conduct this retreat, they seem to know that without her, Zauberwald would go under. Those concerns are highlighted when Masha abruptly cancels the first night’s session because Peter’s father hasn’t arrived yet.
Photo: Reiner Bajo/DisneyWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? More than ever, Nine Perfect Strangers, created by David E. Kelley and John-Henry Butterworth based on Liane Moriarty’s novel, feels like a less-violent knock-off of The White Lotus. Both shows even feature a tense character played by Murray Bartlett.
Our Take: The best thing we can say about the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers is that the people seeking Masha’s help aren’t as insufferable as the ones that arrived at her old resort in the first season — which was almost four years ago, believe it or not. While everyone coming to Zauberwald is privileged in one way or another, most of them actually seem like they have something resembling a human personality and some empathy.
We even get a little nuance from some of the people when we first meet them. David, who is likely the most cartoonish of the characters at the outset, given his penchant for rage, feels deep guilt when he realize how much he assumed about Agnes. On the other end of the spectrum is Agnes herself, who is coy about why she’s there gives us a clue into her psyche when, after Wolfie observes how respectful people are to her, says that they shouldn’t be.
When you get the caliber of actors that this series attracts, performances are good across the board. We like Murphy bantering with Baranski about the usual tense mother-daughter issues. Golding is his usual charming self, albeit a bit of a poser about his outdoorsy bona fides. And Richardson-Sellers and Princess are convincing as the couple trying to recapture their musical magic.
As usual, the distraction is Kidman and her quasi-Russian accent. It does seem that Masha is less of a mysterious figure this season, given that the presentation we see her make in the first scene gives us an indication of what she has planned for her new group of patients. But we have to wonder how much of this is going to be about Masha and how much is going to be about the patients. Will Martin and Helena call her out on her methods or sit back and just let her do her thing? And how bad will Masha’s treatment mess up her patients? All that is yet to be seen, but we’re not 100 percent sure we’re intrigued enough about any of it to find out.
Photo: Reiner Bajo/DisneySex and Skin: Nothing much in the first episode.
Parting Shot: David talks to his driver about the retreat and says, “Maybe they’ll make me into a good person. You never know.”
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Lena Olin as Helena, mainly because we always like seeing her, and we have hope that she’s given more to do than what we saw in the first episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Thirty-five is a really difficult age. It’s when the panic sets in,” Victoria says to Matteo about Imogen.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re still largely “meh” about Nine Perfect Strangers, but the show’s second season is marginally better than its first. Since we recommended the first season, it would be hard for us to tell you to skip the better second season, right?
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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