Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Little Women’ On PBS Proves Some Stories Are Just Perfect

There are few stories that command the heart like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Set during the tumultuous 1860s, it follows the loves and losses of four spirited sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. The novel’s drama and its indelible personalities have inspired many adaptations over the years, but will this new miniseries — marking the debut of a Hollywood royal — win you over?

LITTLE WOMEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear teenage girls laughing and see a close up of a corset being loosened. This is followed by still more shots of old-timey undergarments as they hit the floor. A door opens, and another teenaged girl pops in, looking stern. She has sharp kitchen shears and says, “Amy’s first.” As it turns out, the girls are cutting locks of hair to send to their father who is far away, serving in the Civil War. (See? It wasn’t kinky at all! Except, it kind of was.)

The Gist: Little Women opens in the middle of the American Civil War. The brutal conflict has separated the pious Mr. March (Dylan Baker) from his independently-minded wife, called “Marmee” (Emily Watson), and their four beloved daughters. Meg (Willa Fitzgerald) is the oldest, and she’s kind-hearted, responsible, and dreams of being a real “lady” in society. Jo (Maya Hawke) is the headstrong tomboy, a budding novelist who plays out her fantasies on the page. Beth (Annes Elwy) is the sweet, tender-hearted one: musically-gifted, but held back by her own shyness.  Finally, Amy (Kathryn Newton) is the golden-locked baby of the family; she can be the most selfish, as she is irrepressibly ambitious.

The four girls’ lives change when a young man named Theodore “Laurie” Lawrence (Jonah Hauer-King) moves in with their neighbor, his rich grandfather. Laurie is transfixed by the March family, not-so-secretly besotted with Jo, and soon pushes in as a friend and confidant.

This latest adaptation, which debuted last Christmas on the BBC, doesn’t stray too far from the source material. The Marches are poor, but well off enough to help a destitute German family, Jo accidentally burns Meg’s hair before a fancy party, Amy furiously burns Jo’s beloved manuscript when she’s banned from going to a play, Jo and Laurie save Amy from drowning in the ice pond, etc. Every beat is hit and the March family overcomes every obstacle with love.

The episode ends in the fateful moment wherein Marmee gets a telegram that their father is deathly ill. She must leave her daughters to fend for themselves as she departs for Washington, DC. Helping her on her way is Jo, who nobly cuts off her lush hair to pay for the expensive train ticket.

Our Take: I have to fess up about something: Little Women, specifically the 1994 film adaptation, is a “thing” for me. I grew up the youngest of four girls in a quirky lower-middle class family, and so I have always identified deeply with the March sisters. (Especially since we track pretty closely to the March girls chemistry-wise.) So I watched this adaptation with a mix of excitement and apprehension. I was excited to see a new take on the story, but worried it may just ruin my favorite parts.

This new Little Women is charming and accomplished. It doesn’t do anything really bold to reinvent the story. The biggest change I saw came down to how they allowed Laurie’s own story to run more parallel with Jo’s. Their respective loneliness — hers is the anomie of not belonging to her time, and his is the plight of the orphaned — is highlighted in such a way that their friendship is inevitable.

Though this miniseries lacks the naturalism of the 1994 film, it handles certain characters’ stories with more tenderness than I’ve seen in previous adaptations. Beth, in particular, is no longer drawn as an angelic martyr, but a prisoner of her own nerves. I was kind of intrigued to see the show hunker down on the subtext that Beth was already battling some sort of anxiety disorder, maybe even agoraphobia, long before she fell ill with scarlet fever.

But the real reason to tune into Little Women is to watch a new star be born. When she was originally cast as Jo March last year, no one in the media really clocked Maya Hawke as someone to watch, but after Netflix announced that Maya Thurman-Hawke would be joining the cast of Stranger Things Season 3, people took notice. Yes, Maya Hawke is the daughter of movie stars Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. She looks like both of her parents and like neither of them. She has an arresting screen presence all her own, and I’m thrilled to say she can act. Jo March is a tough role to just slide into. Winona Ryder, Katharine Hepburn, and other luminaries have made it indelibly their own. But Hawke has that elusive “it” factor. She has a charisma that demands that you watch her, which is perfect since Jo March is our window into this very quaint and specific world.

Sex and Skin: Besides that weirdly kinky opening — and I mean, I’m still scratching my head about that because it was a choice – there’s hardly anything of a sexual nature in the show. There is a lot of clean cut flirting and sweet blushes exchanged, but this show, like its source material, is decidedly PG.

Parting Shot: After Marmee leaves the four girls to attend to their sick, and possibly dying, father in Washington, DC, Jo retreats to the backyard. Perhaps emboldened by her new short cropped hair, she takes to chopping wood to let out her anxiety and aggression.

Sleeper Star: Sure, he’s no Christian Bale, but Jonah Hauer-King is a veritable teenage dream. His Laurie is sweet and still unsure of himself. Bale’s Laurie looked at the March girls like nymphs who could save him from his sorrow, but Hauer-King looks at them like they’re superheroes. It’s a charming update for this new iteration of the tale.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Jo takes it upon herself to sell her long medieval locks so she can buy Marmee a train ticket to Washington, DC, she reasons with the wigmaker by saying, “Don’t you have anyone in the war?” It would be corny on its own, but since this is the Civil War we’re talking about, I found the context of a white woman playing this card in a black man’s place of business to be a little…hmm.

Our Call: Stream it! It’s charming, family-friendly fun that brings new pathos to some classic characters. Plus, you’re going to want to be Team Maya Hawke before she hits Season 3 of Stranger Things. (That way you can tell your friends that you saw her first.)

Little Women debuts on PBS tonight.

Where to Stream Little Women (2017)