Drama
The Rainmaker
This adaptation may lack the depth of its source material, but it isn’t a bad option if you’re itching for a new legal drama.
Alice Hart was born on an Australian road. So her mother told her, anyway. Perhaps it’s only fitting that her life would be so rocky.
She grew up with bruises on her arms and fear in her soul. Her mother would sink into deep depression. Her father would carve wonders for 9-year-old Alice—then beat her if she displeased him.
And then one day it was all gone—burned to ash.
After the fire, Alice was whisked away to the home of her grandmother, June. And what a curious home it was to be. Thornfield wasn’t just a house; it was a plantation, a flower farm worked by the women who found themselves there. Those women—called “the flowers” themselves—didn’t just care for plants. They used them to communicate. Through flowers, they spoke about truths and problems that words struggled to encompass.
But even flowers can’t communicate all the home’s secrets.
Before the fire, Alice never even knew that June existed. She never heard about the farm or its bevy of inhabitants. If Alice’s mom and dad kept a whole family secret, what secrets might June be holding? What skeletons lurk in Thornfield’s many closets?
As Alice grows up, the secrets seem to grow in importance. She wants to know what’s been kept so hidden. She wants to understand her strange upbringing—both before the age of 9 and after.
But those secrets may be too hard to stomach, the betrayals to bitter to bear. And if she leaves this home, where will home be?
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, a seven-part miniseries on Amazon’s Prime Video, is based on the debut novel of Holly Ringland—a poetic rumination on story, family and creating your own destiny. The television series mirrors some of the book’s almost fairy-tale quality, with dream-like scenes intertwined with Alice’s love of old folklore and the mystical language of flowers.
It doesn’t appear that there’s any actual magic in play, but we see near occultic echoes throughout, even at this early juncture. Locks of hair are tied into doll-like figures and hung, like charms, on bedframes and barns. The folklore we hear comes with its own mythological or pagan undertones. And Thornfield is an object of suspicion amongst the surrounding locals, who suspect it’s populated by “witches, drug addicts or lesbians.”
The locals may be onto something. June and Twig (the latter seemingly Thornfield’s second in command) appear to be in a committed relationship. The two women share a tender kiss in the opening episode, and Trig tells June that Alice is “our granddaughter.”
We also hear a bit of strong language, including a rare f-word. Some other profanity occasionally drops into the dialogue, too. Still, the showrunners seem to understand that a lot of swear words would run counter to the grim fairytale vibe the show’s gunning for.
In other words, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a difficult, problematic show, but it’s not a gratuitous one. It focuses on the story and its complex characters. But just as Alice’s world is one of pain and secrets, so this show is filled with its own hidden dangers.
The premiere episode introduces us to 9-year-old Alice and her parents, Agnes and Clem. And while at first it would seem that the family lives an idyllic life by the sea, it soon becomes obvious that Clem keeps Agnes and Alice practically imprisoned in their faraway home. When Clem’s gone and Agnes sinks into a deep depression, Alice decides to walk into town and meets a kindly librarian named Sally, who notices the bruises on her arms.
Alice’s trip to town triggers a welfare visit by police—a visit that subsequently triggers a vicious beating. But the officer also brings a handful of books that Alice “forgot” at the library. One of those books, Fire Gods: Myths and Legends, becomes particularly interesting to Alice. She’s especially attracted to the myth of the phoenix, a creature that sets itself on fire at the end of its life, and then is reborn as a result of the immolation. Shortly thereafter, Alice’s own family homestead is destroyed by fire—and Alice’s parents and unborn baby brother are apparently killed.
Alice is also seriously hurt—though it appears her injuries are from Clem, not the fire. One of her eyes is swollen shut, and her face is covered with bruises and her arms heavily bandaged. We hear that one of Alice’s lungs has collapsed and that her trachea suffered trauma, likely from being choked. Her mother, Anges, was alive when she arrived at the hospital, but a death certificate confirms the woman’s demise. (The baby was delivered, but being only 25 weeks old, doctors expect the premature boy to die.) The last we see of Clem is in a body bag.
Earlier, Alice imagines pouring gasoline on her father and setting him on fire. We see him wake up, engulfed in flames, and lurch toward Alice.
Both Alice and her mother have bruises on their arms. Clem yanks Alice into a room; off-camera, we hear her scream amid the sounds of his implied physical abuse. In flashback, a woman walks into an ocean, apparently with the desire to kill herself. We’re told that Agnes gave birth to Alice in the middle of a road. After the birth, Agnes apparently stopped breathing. Alice’s squalls revived her, and Agnes tells Alice, “You brought me back to life.”
A hand bears a horrific scar. June walks around the flower farm with a gun, as if expecting to be attacked.
We hear various legends, including a critical one about the selkie. It’s an Irish myth about a group of half-seal, half-woman creatures who would strip off their sealskin coats and dance naked on the beach once a year. We’re told that a man stole one of the selkie’s sealskins and thus condemned the selkie to be with him, until she found the coat and returned to her sisters. (The show intends for us to ponder the parallels between the selkie’s story and what little we know of Agnes.)
Sally gives Alice a Harry Potter book, telling her that it’s only the most famous children’s series of all time. We see hair twisted into doll-like creations. Women design bouquets of flowers that double as messages for those who can understand them. (When one woman makes such a bouquet, another woman sees the flowers being used and asks, “Who died?”)
Two women share a kiss and refer to Alice as “our granddaughter.” Someone drinks a beer, and another character also seems to consume an alcoholic beverage. We hear the f-word twice—but once in the background so it’s barely audible. We also hear “a–.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
This adaptation may lack the depth of its source material, but it isn’t a bad option if you’re itching for a new legal drama.
‘Long Story Short’ comes with much of the same humorous melancholy that came with ‘BoJack Horseman’…and many of the same content issues, too.
Based on novel by Jenny Han, this series follows the complex love life of Belly, a young girl caught between two boys who are childhood friends as she joins the world of debutantes.
Crude, profane, salacious and offensive, Foodtopia just might make you sick to your stomach.
