Little Women is streaming on Netflix.Netflix’s new drama Little Women is what author Louisa May Alcott would have written if she was putting pen to paper in the 21st century. Far from the comforting domesticity in genteel poverty that the sisters endured, we get a show that is an uncomfortable, eerie dystopian drama with unsettling messaging.
Little Women tells the story of three sisters — played by the exemplary Kim Go-eun, Nam Ji-hyun and Park Ji-hoo (who was recently seen in All of Us Are Dead). The three sisters have been brought up in extreme poverty and now live in a somewhat modest home. The show turns the novel on its head, and presents a far more hardened and cynical story, rife with intrigue, personal demons and crime. In Louisa May Alcott’s story, the four girls live with their mother ‘Marmee’ the ideal maternal figure in rather less-than-modest conditions while their father is away at war. In the series, the three sisters just have each other, and don’t receive any support from their parents, who are the bane of their existence.
They live in a small, cramped house where the girls share one room, and have a simple lifestyle, that involves them using salt for brushing their teeth. It’s not much, but just enough to get by and the girls harbour bigger dreams that are stifled by their poverty. Both the elder sisters are struggling for survival at work, while the younger sibling, who is in high school, is heading into an emotional breakdown. Kim Go-eun’s In-joo has faint traces of resemblance to Meg March in the novel, but unlike her literary counterpart who had a happy married life, she is divorced and realises that marrying a rich man won’t solve her problems.
Far from Alcott’s warm and ‘love-is-all-you-need’ tale, the sisters — In-joo (Kim Go-eun) and In-kyung (Nam Ji-hyun) and In-hye (Ji-hoo) are battling tangled issues that begin to spiral. Their mother escapes with their hard-earned money to see their father in the Philippines, a man who is responsible for the debts the girls have been paying for years. The mother exits the scene, and malicious aunt steps into the mess — they don’t like her, but she has the money that could help them. Yet, abundance of money won’t solve any problems as they learn in the show and it could just be bring them more ruin.
Little Women is all about money and how the sheer lack of it pushes one into exploring darker aspects of themselves, similar to the themes of Parasite, and the recent phenomenon, Squid Game. The heart of this genre — people being strapped for cash and scouring for any form of means to survive, while the desperation chips at them, little by little and finally tears them apart from inside.
The premiere wastes no time in setting the characters and the premise, promising that the show will not be straightforward at all—in fact, it’s going to be thoroughly knotted and messy (in a good way). In-joo is a hard-working but exhausted employee, who is treated as an outcast at her workplace, owing to her modest means of living. Considering South Korean shows usually have powerful messages on bullying and being ostracised, Little Women doesn’t dial it back and shows the repercussions, in a brilliantly subtle, yet impactful manner. On the other hand, In-kyung faces suspension after she is found intoxicated on the job, as she smuggles tequila in mouthwash bottles.
After the suicide of her only rich friend at work, In-joo finds herself bequeathed with 70 million won and complicated cases of murder, alleged suicide, the haunting beauty of orchids and an odd foot-fetish where a man letches after women with cheap heels — you read that right. In-joo’s burgeoning problems are intricately connected to In-kyung’s professional chaos, as she sets off to tackle a murder case, while struggling with her own alcoholism. The third ‘sensitive’ artistic sister is another player in this drama, with her own deflating aspirations and crippling image of self-worth controlled by her poverty. It’s clear that the personal traumas and professional lives of the three girls are going to collide and the collision will have astronomical repercussions.
The acting from the three sisters adds to the fire of the show, and Kim Go-eun, who rarely disappoints, proves her Midas touch again. She shows that she can adapt herself into all genres, ranging from romantic to historical and now, a dystopian crime show.
Nam Ji-hyun has left her Suspicious Partner days far behind her and brings to life a character beset by her own demons and anxieties and Park Ji-hoo’s In-hye is a far cry from the plaintive On-ju from All Of Us Are Dead.
The first two episodes of Little Women are far more absorbing than the trailer had promised. It sets the tone for another deeply unsettling series—and with a prolific cast that includes Kim Go-eun, Nam Ji-hyun, Wi Ja-hoon, and Park Ji-hoo, it might just be the next best thing on Netflix.