Nicole Kidman returns as an extremely unconventional therapist (along with a fresh batch of clients) in season two of Nine Perfect Strangers – streaming on Prime Video. The show has gained a lot from being in its second season, writes Amelia Berry.
What’s stopping you from being the person you want to be? Maybe a bad relationship with your mother? A trauma hidden deep in your past? Maybe some kind of inscrutable mental block that you just can’t get over?
What if I told you that all you needed for a full psychological rebirth was a luxurious holiday in the Austrian Alps, a series of maddening team building exercises, a hint of mortal danger, and enough psychedelic drugs to fuel a mid-sized music festival? You in? Good!
That’s the recipe behind season two of Nine Perfect Strangers.
Starring Australian national treasure Nicole Kidman as a sketchy Russian therapist with culty aura and a mysterious past, Nine Perfect Strangers began life in 2021 as a limited-series adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s (author of Big Little Lies) novel of the same name.
The premise is simple: Kidman’s Masha Dmitrichenko runs an exclusive wellness centre known for its unconventional therapies. She hand-picks a group of nine patients to undergo extreme and psychedelic group therapy where they will overcome their traumas in ten days… or else! Wellness ensues.
So far, so intriguing—and with the series premiere clocking in as the most-watched Hulu original of all time, the decision was made to transform Nine Perfect Strangers into an anthology.
So, for season two we’re back with Masha, now the subject of several federal investigations and a favourite of the Ted Talk psychedelics circuit. To escape some of the heat, she agrees to run her programme at an exclusive health resort in the Austrian Alps—the home of her original mentor Helena (Lena Olin). Helena’s son, Martin (Lucas Englander) isn’t so sure.
Against this gloriously scenic backdrop, we meet this season’s ragtag Nine (who may just have more in common than they suspect…!).
Imogen (Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek) and Victoria (Christine Baranski from Mamma Mia! & The Gilded Age) are a wealthy daughter and mother with an extremely strained relationship. Think Lorelai and Emily from Gilmore Girls… if Lorelai was obsessed with quoting esoteric psychotherapist Carl Jung.
Much to Imogen’s horror, Victoria has arrived with her handsome and ‘geographically ambiguous’ boy toy, Matteo (Aras Aydın), who seems perfectly nice if a bit dim.
Imogen instantly hits it off with hapless but charming Peter (Henry Golding from Crazy Rich Asians). While Peter is anxious that his infamous billionaire father David (Mark Strong from Kingsman: The Secret Service) has not yet arrived at the resort. Probably too busy making ominous phone calls.
Our cast is rounded out by disgraced puppeteer and former children’s TV host Brian (Murray Bartlett from The White Lotus‘s first season), wry but guarded ex-nun Agnes (Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness), and musical lesbians in a struggling relationship, Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) and Tina (King Princess).
Nine Perfect Strangers gains a lot from being in its second season. Not only is it free from some of the restraints that come from adapting a popular novel (and the restraints of being produced under full Covid restrictions)—but now that we definitely know that Masha’s therapy works and that she’s not secretly an evil serial killer or whatever, we’re free to focus on the juicy, juicy, inter-character drama that makes the show so good.
While Masha in season one may have been a mad scientist (negative) who turned out to be a mad scientist (positive), in season two she is fully realised as the Willy Wonka of dangerously experimental psychotherapy. “I think it’s so different from anything I do. There’s such a kind of a mischievous quality to her,” Nicole Kidman told Vanity Fair. “She’s not what she seems, which is always a wonderful thing to play.”
Kidman is clearly having a ball with the character, leaning into her otherworldly weirdness. “Masha is sort of Russian American, but she’s also been raised in England, and she’s worked all over Europe. So she speaks seven languages, which is why she has this very kind of fluid accent. Which was always what I wanted—sort of so that you can’t quite pin it down,”
While of course there are secrets, reveals, and mysteries, really Nine Perfect Strangers is a perfect formula for pure glorious melodrama—a dozen damaged characters with axes to grind locked in a big spooky house and told to take some mushrooms and make nice. And with a collection of backstories and issues that are so kooky, it never gets a chance to get dull or repetitive.
The ensemble also has incredible comic chops, with particular standouts being the unlikely double act of Agnes and Brian (and Brian’s beloved puppet… ok, triple act) and of course Imogen and Victoria—with Annie Murphy and Christine Baranski a pairing that I’m just dying to see more of.
But perhaps the thing that sets Nine Perfect Strangers most apart from other black comedy dramas on TV—especially the oft-compared White Lotus (wealthy, resort, drama, etc)—is how ultimately hopeful it is. Despite the drama, the misdeeds, the danger, the bad decisions, Nine Perfect Strangers believes that people genuinely can change and grow—and it only takes a little openness, caring, and a wee microdose of LSD to do it.
Even if you bounced off of Nine Perfect Strangers season one, the second season is definitely worth a look. The formula is honed, the cast is incredible, the stakes are high, and the location is just to die for. “The air, it’s healthy, obviously,” says Kidman. “It’s incredibly healthy there, but it’s also invigorating and confronting.” Healthy, invigorating, confronting… what more could you ask for?
