Netflix’s number 1 TV show, East of Eden, is one of the best period dramas it has made, drawing 6.5 million views in its first week. The series, starring Florence Pugh, is based on John Steinbeck’s epic novel and has been adapted by Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the 1955 film adaptation.
A sweeping family saga
The seven episodes tell the story of the Trask family across several generations, starting in Civil War Connecticut with brothers Adam and Charles, played by Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist. Their relationship is soured by their father’s favouritism, long before Cathy, played by Pugh, enters their lives and wreaks volcanic change.
Cathy, whose past includes sex work and the slaughter of her parents, marries Adam and is forced out west to start a new life. After giving birth to a new set of Trask brothers, she violently abandons Adam and the newborns. The rest of the sweeping drama makes up the 1955 adaptation starring James Dean, as the Second World War screeches into view and the new Trask men repeat the mistakes of their elders.
Performances and writing praised
The result is a magnificent show, with a quality and subtlety that the reviewer assumed Netflix were no longer interested in making. The show’s brilliance rests on its fantastic performances and writing that avoids the period drama pitfalls of being drab or sluggish. Pugh’s show-stealing turn as malevolent, complicated Cathy will receive the most praise, but a close second is Hoon Lee, who plays the Trask family’s Chinese-American housekeeper, Lee.
Lee has been inflated from the original novel, and the drama’s much-needed tenderness stems from him, as one half of an interesting platonic marriage-of-sorts with Adam, raising the twin boys Cathy ditched.
Budget constraints and the weakest episode
Seven seems a strange number of episodes. Indeed, an eighth instalment, dedicated to Lee’s brief hiatus away from the Trask family, was scrapped for cost reasons, with surviving scenes integrated into the rest of the show. Kazan has said she had to cut additional scenes from every single episode to stay within budget.
Perhaps as a result, it is well-paced, but in other ways, you can feel that salami-slicing: Faist doesn’t get the look-in you would imagine or hope for. Far from that absorbing start, the last episode is the weakest. It recreates much of the 50s film, with Joseph Zada in the Dean role, using some out-of-place magic realism and heavy-handed tapping on the thematic questions of fate and whether badness is inherent.
Kazan has leaned on her heritage when promoting the show, and it is clear that remaking what her grandfather accomplished was a demanding task. That is its own family saga, separate from this one, which has still been gorgeously rendered for a new generation. East of Eden is available to stream on Netflix.
