A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017-Present)

This TV adaptation of the incredible Lemony Snicket series is just everything I want it to be.  Its first season dropped on Netflix on the recent Friday the 13^th, and every element – writing, acting, production design, tone – fires on all cylinders to create a truly winning-yet-morose series that absolutely captures the spirit and sensibility of the books (premise spoilers by necessity.)

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire find their lives irrevocably changed when their parents are killed in a terrible fire that destroys their home.  Placed in the well-meaning but distracted hands of Mr. Poe, the executor of their parents’ will, the Baudelaires are left to the care of Count Olaf, a self-impressed actor and odious villain who will stop at nothing to get the Baudelaire fortune.  The clever and resourceful orphans are sent on a series of misadventures, dropped into the home of one guardian after the other, as they work to elude Count Olaf’s pursuit of them/neverending schemes.  Season 1 covers the first four books of the series.

I can honestly say that these characters and the world they inhabit really feel like they’ve emerged directly from the pages of the books.  The sets, costumes, and locales are all perfectly on point, with numerous shots superbly echoing specific book illustrations (I was straight-up amazed at how much Neil Patrick Harris’s Count Olaf looks like the illustrations of the character.)  And given the fact that we are looking at multiple books here, the show has the chance to create a number of different iconic places from the series; Uncle Monty’s house is particularly well-rendered.  The series does a really nice job of adapting the highly-literate language of the books as well.  The Baudelaires’ polite, articulate dialogue has a slightly-preserved feel and yet still comes across as genuine, and a good balance is struck with the subtitles on Sunny’s baby talk (she’s not as verbose as she is in the books, but her lines mostly feel true to her character.)  And Lemony Snicket himself is very well-incorporated, a gloomy narrator who’s forever present without feeling intrusive.

The acting is excellent across the board.  Given a thousand guesses, I probably would’ve never come up with the idea of casting Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket, but he’s absolutely perfect.  His voice hits that sweet spot between lugubrious and matter-of-fact that’s crucial to Snicket, and he brings dark humor and earnest warmth in equal measure.  Meanwhile, I was cautiously curious/looking forward to Neil Patrick Harris’s performance as Count Olaf since I first heard he’d be playing the part, and frankly, I think he’s incredible.  It’s a deceptively tough role to take on, because Olaf has to be over-the-top ridiculous and genuinely menacing, often both within the same scene, and Harris threads that needle really well.  Malina Weissman (young Kara from Supergirl) and Louis Hynes are both wonderful as inventor Violet and researcher Klaus, and while, as baby Sunny, Presley Smith doesn’t have to do too much more than look adorable, I love her, too.  All of Olaf’s henchpeople and the assorted story-specific adults are finely cast.  And on a final note, although the series is still definitely very white overall, I appreciate the intentional racebending on a number of characters, such as the Poes, Uncle Monty, the hook-handed man, and Aunt Josephine.

Warnings

Dark themes, violence, some scary scenes for kids, drinking/smoking, and general melancholy.