Introducing HBO's 'Big Little Lies'

HBO’s A-lister-laden event series about dysfunctional NorCal parents is a skillful soap opera too serious for its own good.

- Tim Goodman

There’s a spectacularly farfetched scene early on in HBO’s star-driven limited series Big Little Lies, based on the bestselling novel by Liane Moriarty, that will be a litmus test for whether you’ll like it: It’s day one of the school year for the first graders of Monterey’s fictitious Otter Bay Elementary, and all the moms (and a few dads) have gathered to pick up the kids. Addressing the parents, the teacher announces that it was a good day except for one thing: A little boy in the class physically hurt a classmate, the angelic daughter of tightly wound, high powered Renata (Laura Dern), and the teacher wants the guilty party to step forward and apologize. When that doesn’t happen, said teacher dramatically points out the boy, the son of a single mom (Shailene Woodley) who moved from Santa Cruz to start anew.

It all devolves into a garbage fire of nastiness, and rarely has there been a starker example of the kind of opt-in/opt-out moment that most series feature in their first episode. If you want to see more of these kinds of over-the-top confrontations, keep watching because there will be many more. But if this is the kind of red flag that scares you off, save seven hours of your time.