Big Little Lies

Annette Bening (American Beauty) and Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) star as married couple and former tennis coaches Joy and Stan, who have just sold their tennis academy and are ready to enjoy retired life. Whilst hoping to enjoy the third act of life with their adult children, Stan and Joy’s dream is quickly shattered when a wounded girl (Georgia Flood, American Princess) comes knocking at the door. When Joy goes missing soon after, the family are forced to pull apart their ‘picture-perfect’ past to discover what dark truths lie within it.

Based on the novel by Celeste Ng, single mother Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) is an artist who moves to Shaker Heights with her daughter and they become the tenants of the picture-perfect Richardson family, fronted by matriarch Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon).

With such different views of the world, the two families are put under the microscope when uncomfortable truths come to light and battle lines are drawn.

If you watched the series and have a craving for more drama, here are some of the best TV shows to watch next.           

"You have to remember what a partisan of the novel I am… and that it had long been one of my ambitions to have my novels defeat all attempts to put them on screen"

-Interview with Jonathan Franzen, New York Times, 26 June 2018

When California-based HBO drama Big Little Lies hit screens earlier this year, it wasn’t the A-list cast or the aspirational architecture that got people talking.

The standout star of the series was its soundtrack, developed by director Jean-Marc Vallée and music supervisor Sue Jacobs.

The soul-inflected soundtrack is central to the series. It begins with Michael Kiwanuka’s Cold Little Heart playing over views of the Pacific Coast Highway and climaxes in the series finale, where Elvis’s back catalogue is weaponised in the power struggle between parents.

Monday: Big Little Lies

Sky Atlantic, 9pm