Prime Video’s new limited-drama “Expats” is emotionally heavy — I cannot overemphasize how heavy it is. Set against the Umbrella Movement (named for how protestors used umbrellas to block police pepper spray) that arose during the 2014 Hong Kong protests for election transparency, “Expats” revolves around a horrific tragedy that triggers a sequence of life-shattering events for wealthy wife Margaret (Nicole Kidman), successful career woman Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and recent Ivy League graduate Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), the three American women at the center of this six-episode series.
Margaret and her multi-ethnic family have lived in Hong Kong for years, and she is looking forward to moving back to the United States to restart her career in landscape architecture, which she put on hold to follow her Asian American husband Clarke (Brian Tee) to Hong Kong. Clarke wants to accept another term in Hong Kong because he likes their cushy lifestyle, but Margaret longs to feel like herself again instead of being defined in relation to her husband and children. Indian American Hilary works in fashion, and her British husband David (Jack Huston) keeps pressuring her to start a family despite their both initially agreeing to remain childless. She’s adamant she doesn’t want to have a child, but everyone in her life keeps telling her she’ll regret it if she doesn’t. As for Korean American Mercy, she is a recent Columbia University graduate and escaped to Hong Kong because she wanted a fresh start to her life at 24. Juggling multiple low-paying jobs to make ends meet, Mercy is lonely and struggling to fit in despite being mistaken as a local because of her East Asian appearance.
Based on the novel “The Expatriates” by Janice Y.K. Lee, the television series adaptation has all the hallmarks of what I love in shows. It explores themes of resilience, denial, self-deception, motherhood and caregiving, as well as scrutinizes the multiple kinds of privilege that…
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