LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2020E5
With the coronavirus
pandemic dominating last
week’s coverage, prime-time
viewership for Fox News
Channel was up 11.6% from
the previous week, while
MSNBC’s viewership was
up 12.3%.
Fox News Channel aver-
aged 3.54 million viewers be-
tween March 9 and Sunday
to be the most-watched ca-
ble network for the eighth
consecutive week, accord-
ing to live-plus-same-day
figures released Tuesday by
Nielsen.
Fox News Channel aver-
aged 3.17 million viewers
from March 2-8, which in-
cluded coverage of the Su-
per Tuesday presidential
primaries.
MSNBC was third
among cable networks after
three consecutive second-
place finishes, averaging
2.30 million viewers, a week
after averaging 2.049 mil-
lion.
CNN was second for the
week, thanks to its coverage
of Sunday’s Democratic
presidential debate, averag-
ing 2.84 million viewers, a
week after averaging 1.32
million, third among cable
networks.
The debate between for-
mer Vice President Joe Bid-
en and Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders, the first one-on-
one debate of the 2020 cam-
paign, averaged 9.90 million
viewers, first among the
week’s cable programs and
third overall.
Viewership was up 33.7%
from the last debate whose
only English-language cov-
erage was on cable, the six-
candidate debate Jan. 14 on
CNN that averaged 7.40 mil-
lion viewers.
An additional 846,000
watched Sunday’s debate
on the Spanish-language
network Univision.
Fox News Channel swept
the second through sixth
spots among the week’s
prime-time cable programs,
topped by its coverage of
President Donald Trump’s
speech to the nation
Wednesday, which averaged
6.44 million viewers, 16th
overall.
A 1-2 finish by “NCIS”
and “60 Minutes” helped
CBS to its fifth consecutive
weekly victory and 10th in
the 25-week-old 2019-20 sea-
son, averaging 6.17 million
viewers.
ABC was second for the
second consecutive week af-
ter back-to-back third-place
finishes, averaging 4.37 mil-
lion viewers. NBC was third,
averaging 3.71 million view-
ers.
Fox averaged 3.02 million
viewers for its 15 hours, 12
minutes of programming,
its sixth consecutive fourth-
place finish among the
broadcast networks follow-
ing its Super Bowl LIV tele-
cast.
CBS, ABC and NBC each
aired 22 hours of prime-time
programming.
“NCIS” averaged 10.76
million viewers for its first
original episode since Feb.- “60 Minutes” averaged
10.44 million viewers to finish
second, the third consecu-
tive week it had finished first
or second.
CBS also had the week’s
most-watched comedy,
“Young Sheldon,” fourth
overall, averaging 8.89 mil-
lion viewers.
NBC had the week’s top
alternative series, “The
Voice,” fifth for the week av-
eraging 8.73 million viewers,
one spot ahead of the sea-
son finale of “The Bachelor”
on ABC, which averaged
8.55 million viewers.
“The Masked Singer”
was Fox’s most-watched
program for the fifth time in
the six weeks since its Super
Bowl telecast, averaging
7.25 million viewers, 11th
overall.
PRIME-TIME
TV RATINGSViewers
flocking
to news
outlets
for info
The coronavirus
outbreak and ongoing
election programming
lift Fox News as well
as CNN and MSNBC.
By Ed StocklyThe relationship be-
tween novelists and the Hol-
lywood machine can often
be fraught. There are count-
less stories of authors dis-
pleased with how their work
has been adapted for the big
and small screen, and plenty
of authors with clout, such
as J.K. Rowling and E.L.
James, have fought for
greater control to ensure
their vision makes it to the
screen.
Not Ng.
“My husband asked me
part way through it all, like,
‘Are you feeling possessive of
it?’ And honestly, I’m really
not,” Ng says after scoping
out some of the set’s interi-
ors, meticulously crafted by
production designer Jessica
Kender. “I wanted it to have
space to be its own thing.”
For the uninitiated:
While the story is set in mo-
tion by an arson — and the
question of why someone in
a seemingly utopian small
town would do such a thing
— it’s the pains and contra-
dictions of motherhood that
provide the drama. Wither-
spoon portrays Elena Rich-
ardson, the wealthy, perfec-
tionist matriarch of a family
with four teenage children;
Washington’s Mia Warren is
a mysterious, bohemian art-
ist and mother who lives
with her teenage daughter in
the Richardsons’ rental
property in idyllic Shaker
Heights, Ohio.
The eight-episode series
joins Hulu’s growing roster
of literary adaptations,
which includes “The Hand-
maid’s Tale” and “Looking
for Alaska,” when the first
three episodes premiered
Tuesday. After that, new ep-
isodes will drop weekly.
“Little Fires Everywhere”
debuts at a complicated
time. As the coronavirus has
people self-quarantining,
and Hollywood has been
scrambling to adjust its film
and TV release plans in re-
sponse, there have been dis-
cussions at Hulu about
whether to release the full
season at once. But, as of
now, there are no plans to
change strategy.
On set last July felt like a
very different world from the
one in which the series will
premiere.
Ng was in town from her
home in Cambridge, Mass.,
to visit the set, and there was
a palpable sense that it was
all a little overwhelming —
with good reason. Before ex-
ploring the various sets, Ng,
dressed in a prim, mauve-
colored sheath dress, sat in-
side the Richardsons’ formal
living room, filming a scene
with Witherspoon and
Washington for the second
episode.
It’s a moment that wasn’t
in the book, involving a tense
discussion of “The Vagina
Monologues” among the
women in a Shaker Heights
book club.
“It felt totally new and
also really familiar,” Ng says.
“It was this weird feeling of,
‘I’ve never seen this with my
eyes before,’ and yet they’re
the characters I imagined.
There was a moment where I
was sitting there and Reese
was chit-chatting with some
of the women in the scene
and it hit me like: I’m here
with Reese Witherspoon
talking about vaginas.”
(Soon after the trio
wrapped, they posed for a
photo while proclaiming
“Vagina!” to the camera.)
The cameo capped Ng’s
helpful, but measured, in-
volvement with the series.
The show’s creator, Liz
Tigelaar (“Casual,” “Bates
Motel”), says she spoke at
length with Ng about her vi-
sion for the series — includ-
ing the tweaks and additions
she wanted to make, like am-
plifying the arcs of the teen
characters and exploring
the sexuality of Elena’s rebel
daughter, Izzy (played by
Megan Stott). Ng reviewed
all the scripts, mostly giving
notes on Shaker Heights,
where she grew up, to make
it feel more authentic. She
also visited the writers room
while they were working on a
flashback episode, bringing
in her high school yearbook
for inspiration.
“We would ask her a mil-
lion questions,” Tigelaar
says. “And we didn’t feel
handcuffed in any way.
Everything that we did in
honoring the book came
from a place of just loving the
book. Our creative process
was never like, ‘Oh, well, we
can’t do this because that
would change something.’ ”
“I really didn’t have any
stipulations, because I
trusted them,” Ng says. “I
talked to both Reese and
Kerry, and later Liz. Theytold me what parts of the
book spoke to them and the
parts that really had stuck
with them. Those were the
parts that were most impor-
tant to me too.”
The story delves into
class and race, particularly
when Mia helps a Chinese
immigrant coworker try to
find the infant daughter she
regrets giving up. And Wash-
ington’s casting as Mia
pulled race deeper into the
storytelling.
“In the initial drafts of the
book,” Ng explains, “I
wanted to make Mia a wom-
an of color. I knew that I
wanted to look at race, but I
knew that there was going to
be this Asian American
baby, and I felt like making
her an Asian American
woman, which was a per-
spective I knew I could write,
would be a little too neat.
Like, of course the Asian
woman will side with the
Asian mother. But I didn’t
feel like I was the right per-
son to write a black woman’s
experience. I didn’t want to
pretend like I knew what
that was like. So, I thought of
her as a white woman, but I
didn’t mark her racially. I am
happy that Reese and Lau-
ren saw the opening to ex-
plore that through Kerry.”
“It’s interesting, because
when people hear about the
show, they’re super excited
and then they’re like, ‘Who’s
in it?,’ ” Ng continues. “And I
tell them. You can see them
having to mentally readjust.
And I actually really like that
little mental reset, where
you can see them going,
‘That is not what I ex-
pected.’ ”
For Ng, who leans on the
metaphor that her song is
being covered by another
band, it’s what she wantedout of the process.
“I didn’t want to just see
exactly what I had in my
mind when I wrote the book,
because I can see that any
time. I wanted to see how
other people interpreted it.”
It helped that “Little Fires
Everywhere” found its way
into capable hands.
Months before the book’s
release, in the spring of 2017
— not long after “Big Little
Lies” made its debut — Ng’s
film agent sent a manuscript
of the novel to Lauren Levy
Neustadter, the head of film
and TV at Witherspoon’s fe-
male-centric media com-
pany, Hello Sunshine. The
actress read it and made it
her book club selection, and
got Washington, who she’d
long wanted to work with, to
read it too, along with Pilar
Savone, who heads devel-
opment for the “Scandal”
star’s Simpson Street pro-
duction company.
Witherspoon says she
was drawn to the way Ng ex-
plored the complexities of
motherhood — particularly
how we are mothered by
women other than our bio-
logical mother — with par-
ticular attention to race and
class.
“What I loved about the
book, it’s really about four
different mothers — how
they became a mother, what
it means to them socioec-
onomically to be a mother,
and morally to be a mother
— and how all of those things
are in conflict,” Witherspoon
said by phone.
In a separate phone call,
Washington added: “We
tend to think in this binary
judgment scale of good
mother, bad mother — even
when we, mothers, think
about ourselves. And [Ng]
was really painting a por-trait of an ocean of nuance in
what kind of mothers you
can be ... At some point
Reese and I were talking
about our own outfits in the
’90s and how we were teen-
agers in the ’90s and it oc-
curred to us for the first time
that we were playing our
mothers. It shocked us both
a little bit that we hadn’t
thought of that sooner.”
All involved believe the
story will resonate with
viewers just as mightily as
the book did. Of course, with
every literary adaptation
that finds success on the
small screen, the question
looms about whether to ex-
tend the life of the series be-
yond the narrative of the
book.
When HBO opted to
move forward with a second
season of “Big Little Lies,”
author Liane Moriarty wrote
a lengthy unpublished nov-
ella to serve as a foundation.
Ng wouldn’t be so inclined.
“It’s a hard thing for me to
get my mind around,” Ng
says. “It’s sort of like imagin-
ing what your kid is going to
be like before I have the kid. I
would feel immensely lucky
if this series does well
enough that they want to
continue it. I don’t think I’d
be able to do what Liane did
and come up with the story. I
feel like I’ve said everything I
know about these charac-
ters. But someone else
might be able to. And I’m OK
with that happening.”
Tigelaar, though, isn’t
ready to turn that page.
“I think it has such a
beautiful beginning, middle
and end — and the finale
feels pretty final,” she says. “I
suppose crazier things have
happened, but for me, we
told the story and I love, love,
love where it ends.”Letting their creative sparks fly
[‘Fires,’ from E1]
JADE PETTYJOHN,left, Reese Witherspoon and Jordan Elsass play a picture-perfect family in idyllic
Shaker Heights, Ohio, whose lives are upended by the mysterious arrival of an artist and her daughter.Erin SimkinHuluat the opportune time for
content-hungry shut-ins.
With the first three episodes
just released, the series fea-
tures executive producers
Reese Witherspoon and
Kerry Washington as fierce-
ly protective mothers from
very different walks of life.
The women’s worlds blow
apart when their paths col-
lide, and questions of class
and race threaten family alli-
ances and long-held com-
munity beliefs about justice
and equity.
Set in the late 1990s, it be-
gins with the Richardsons,
an affluent, white, oh-so-
perfect family of six with
deep roots in Shaker
Heights, Ohio, an unbeliev-
ably hermetic Cleveland
suburb where public school
students naturally matricu-
late to Harvard and an over-
grown front lawn equals a
city fine and deep social
shame. Family matriarch El-
ena (Witherspoon) is the re-
gion’s premier poster wife
and mother.
Then transient single
mom Mia Warren (Washing-
ton) and her teen daughter,
Pearl (Lexi Underwood),
roll into town in their
broken-down blue Chevy
hatchback. First they rent a
property from the Rich-
ardsons, then the families’
lives become even more
intertwined when Mia takes
on domestic work in Elena’s
home and their teenage
kids become friends, and
lovers.
Shaker Heights’ commu-
nity ethos — that “every-
thing should be planned out,
and that by doing so you
could avoid the unseemly,
the unpleasant and the
disastrous” — is rocked to
its core when the moms
eventually clash over the pa-
rental rights of Mia’s co-
worker at her second job in aChinese restaurant, Bebe
Chow (Lu Huang), a poor
immigrant from China who’s
in search of her abandoned
child.
The problem here is that
Witherspoon’s entitled
housewife who thinks she’s
progressive (spoiler alert:
she’s not) looks a lot like her
character in “Big Little
Lies,” though more fastidi-
ously groomed and less in-
trospective. She can’t help
but swing her hair when she
walks.
Washington’s struggling,
down-on-her luck Mia is
equally narrow. The
strapped artist is always an-
gry, always ready to blow, al-ways ready for a fight. She’s
been on the losing end of sys-
temic racial and gender bias,
and her face is set on perma-
nent scowl.
When the clueless yet
strident Elena has it out
with her and accuses Mia of
making terrible choices as a
mother, she dishes out the
obvious retort of what
choices?!She never had the
“options that being rich and
white and entitled” gave her
counterpart.
Clumsy dialogue aside,
“Little Fires Everywhere” is
entertaining as a high-end
soap opera driven by star
power, a little bit of mystery
and lots of ’90s pop culture
references. Suburban life
plays out over the music of
Liz Phair and TLC, clips of
Ricki Lake and “The Real
World.” Elena’s book club
squirms while gingerly dis-
cussing “The Vagina Mono-
logues,” and it’s un-ironic
when the kids wear high-rise
shorts.
Adapted for television by
Liz Tigelaar, “Little Fires Ev-
erywhere” is reportedly
faithful to the spirit of the
book — executive producer
Ng consulted on the scripts
for the hour-long episodes —
but heightens the impor-
tance of race in the narra-
tive, particularly regarding
Mia, whose race isn’t
marked in the novel.
The teens here are the
best part of the show, par-
ticularly the overachieving
Pearl. Underwood convinc-
ingly plays an independent,
emotionally torn young
woman whose exceptional
maturity is a clear reactionto being raised by a self-cen-
tered, unstable mother. El-
ena’s gentle son, Moody
(Gavin Lewis), develops a
crush on her, though she be-
gins to gravitate toward his
older brother, Trip (Jordan
Elsass), a lunk-headed jock.
The youngest Richardson
sibling, Izzy (Megan Stott),
is an outcast misunderstood
by her cruel classmates and
preppy mother. When she
befriends like-minded ec-
centric Mia, the literal fire-
works begin.
The adults, on the other
hand, carry the burden of
representing archetypes
in the series’ class war. El-
ena’s lawyer husband, Bill
(Joshua Jackson), for exam-
ple, is a good provider/lousy
listener more interested in
her procurement of the dry
cleaning than her relation-
ship with the kids. He an-
nounces “Honey, I’m home!”
after his long work day. She
starts that day arranging
color-coded sack lunches for
the children.
Motherhood, in all its
pain and joy, is a recurring
theme here, inspiring lines
so good they cut to the bone.
As Elena, after a glass or two
of wine, laments of her rocky
relationship with Izzy, “You
take it for granted that
they’ll love you forever. That
they’ll love you at all.”
“Little Fires Everywhere”
is not a searing masterpiece
nor a flaming disaster. It’s a
fast, easy-to-watch drama
where family relationships
are the kindling and social
mores an accelerator.
Watch it all go up in
flames.‘Little Fires
Everywhere’
Where:Hulu
When:Any time
Rated: TV-MA (may be
unsuitable for children
under the age of 17)Not so searing, but it hits the mark
[Review,from E1]
LEXI UNDERWOODportrays overachieving Pearl
and Gavin Lewis is the gentle Moody in the new
drama “Little Fires Everywhere” on Hulu.Erin SimkinHulu