TV review: Nicole Kidman has an extra creepy presence in Nine Perfect Strangers 

Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers.

Nine Perfect Strangers (Prime Video) isn’t perfect. But it’s not far off.

The headline is that Nicole Kidman is in it. The story is that she is used sparingly, so her character Masha has an extra creepy presence. Not that she needs much boosting on the creepiness front. 

In season one, she ran a wellness retreat for wealthy types, with the twist that she was micro-dosing them with magic mushrooms without their consent. The double-down on that twist is Masha was also dosing herself to reconnect with her dead daughter through hallucination.

It was intriguing and sad and better than White Lotus and now it’s back for season two.

This time we’re in the Bavarian Alps run by the woman who introduced Masha to the mushrooms. There is a mixed-bag of wealthy types trying to cope with trauma and broken relationships. These include a possibly dodgy nun, an awful billionaire, a disgraced children’s TV host, and a talking bear. Masha watches over them all through a network of hidden cameras, clashing with a scientist who reminds me of a vampire.

The best thing about Nine Perfect Strangers is they don’t spoon-feed the story. It drops slowly over the opening episodes, luring you in with brilliant performances. The mystery here is the characters — what are they really like, what did they really do in the past, where is this going?

It’s gripping and twisty. Masha’s daughter ‘appears’ to her in the opening episode to tell her she is very cold, it’s freezing in the after-life. This must be the nightmare for anyone who has lost a child, wondering if they are at peace. But Masha dismisses her, telling her daughter to get on with it, so she can get back to sleep. It’s unpredictably real, like a lot of this show.

It’s also nice. That’s the only word for it — nice. Not in a Highway to Heaven or Ted Lasso way, no one wants that. But there is a gentleness as the characters delve into their failed relationships, bad parents and toxic workplaces, a message that we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves.

That’s just the side-show though. Episode two ends with the awful billionaire finally arriving to try and patch up things with his son. This involves a twist I hadn’t seen coming, nudging the story forward again.

Nine Perfect Strangers has proper characters, genuine emotion, and a decent story purring away in the background. Give it a watch.