Summary
A Nearly Normal Family isn’t anything new, but it’s very capable genre entertainment ideally suited to a weekend binge-watch.
It isn’t like Netflix is short on gripping international thrillers, but it’s always nice to have another. Enter, then, A Nearly Normal Family, an attention-grabbing title if ever there was one, on this occasion taken from the bestselling novel of the same name by M. T. Edvardsson (translated to English by Rachel Willson-Broyles).
It isn’t like limited series adapted from books are rare on the streaming giant either, but again, here we are. It’s more obvious here than it perhaps typically is, though, since across its six episodes, the Swedish thriller really mimics the beats and structure of a potboiler, that can’t-put-down, just-one-more-page feeling ideally suited to the Binge Age.
A Nearly Normal Family Season 1 review and plot summary
Like most thrillers, this one is about a murder. And like most stories about murder, we don’t know who did it. The chief suspect is Stella (Alexandra Karlsson Tyrefors), the 19-year-old daughter of Adam (Björn Bengtsson), a priest, and Ulrika (Lo Kauppi), a successful lawyer. She’s accused of murdering her boyfriend, Christoffer Olsen (Christian Fandango Sundgren). But did she?
Well, there wouldn’t be much point in watching if I told you that, but needless to say, the resultant furor doesn’t just turn Stella’s life upside-down but also her family’s, who it turns out are all hiding some secrets that they’d rather didn’t see the light of day.
Fair warning, A Nearly Normal Family has some heavy elements. It takes place four years after a sexual assault and isn’t exactly knockabout fun as it proceeds. But that isn’t what people come to thrillers looking for. The strained, secretive family dynamic and the underlying whodunit are the selling points, and while they’re tropes, this series is good at putting an engaging spin on them through its use of shifting perspective.
RELATED: Where was A Nearly Normal Family filmed?
The variable POV – a technique borrowed from the book – provides multiple angles on the same event, which limits the need for cheap thriller tactics and allows the audience to take in the plot’s ramifications from multiple viewpoints. No, this isn’t new either, but it works well enough to keep the material interesting.
Without a need for red herrings and plot points that totally strain credulity, A Nearly Normal Family is easy enough to buy into for the duration, and makes it for a satisfying pay-off. Six episodes are enough to tell the story without being overbearing – each runs, mercifully, under an hour – and there’s enough going on in each overlapping story strand to maintain the viewer’s interest.
Workmanlike entertainment
Look, it’s not winning any awards. But truthfully it doesn’t need to, since this is exactly the kind of weekend binge it’s claiming to be and has no aspirations of being anything else. There’s absolutely a place for that kind of genre entertainment, and the place, at this point, is pretty undeniably Netflix.
Fans of the source material may have a different opinion, but it’s hard to see why given how well the adaptation preserves the essential beats and structure. A Nearly Normal Family is, fundamentally, just a workmanlike slice of pulpy entertainment intended to keep you entertained for a few hours, and maybe offer one or two surprises along the way, and it does that well enough that it’d be petty not to give it a solid recommendation.
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