Little Fires Everywhere shows the cracks in trying to be the perfect mother

Hulu’s new series based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel shows that whatever way we bring up our kids, nobody can get it exactly right, writes Charlotte Cripps

Reese Witherspoon as Elena and Kerry Washington as Mia in Hulu's 'Little Fires Everywhere' (Prime Video)

Little Fires Everywhere’s Elena (Reese Witherspoon) has a seemingly picture-perfect life. Until she and her mini-me daughter Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn) have a bust-up. “There’s all this pressure to be all of these things…to be f***ing perfect. But I’m not. I’m not f***ing perfect,” says the teenager – who is finally unravelling. “Yes you are!” her mum shouts back. The bedroom door slams shut. “No, I’m not.”

Adapted from Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel of the same name, Hulu’s new family drama (streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK) is the latest TV show to centre around motherhood – a topic that, until recently, was chronically under-explored. Arriving in the wake of shows like BBC sitcom Motherland and Netflix’s Workin’ Moms, it stars Witherspoon as Elena Richardson, a wealthy, perfectionistic mother of four teenagers. Living in an affluent suburb of Ohio with her lawyer husband, she’s the type of person who has a colour-coded calendar on the fridge door (a “psycho calendar”, as her youngest daughter Izzy calls it). She gets the kids to wear tartan for the Christmas card photo. She makes pancakes in the shape of the first letter of her children’s names for breakfast, and sends her youngest child off to orchestra camp.

Sound familiar? Definitely not in my household. As a single mum of two kids under four, I have hidden any musical instruments in fear that the repeated noise of a recorder will finish me off. The nearest my children have got to a camp is a tent in the garden. The dog often gets to the kid’s breakfasts before they do.