Expats (miniseries)

Expats is an American drama television miniseries created and directed by Lulu Wang, based on the 2016 novel The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee. It premiered on Amazon Prime Video on January 26, 2024. It stars Nicole Kidman as Margaret Woo, an American expatriate living in Hong Kong when tragedy befalls her family.

Expats follows "the vibrant lives of a close-knit expatriate community: where affluence is celebrated, friendships are intense but knowingly temporary, and personal lives, deaths and marriages are played out publicly—then retold with glee."

On February 7, 2017, it was reported that Blossom Films had optioned the screen rights to Janice Y. K. Lee's novel The Expatriates with the intention of developing it into a television series. Alice Bell was attached to write the adaptation. Executive producers were expected to consist of Nicole Kidman, Per Saari, and Theresa Park with Lee set to serve as a consulting producer. Alongside Blossom Films, production companies involved with the production were slated to include POW! Productions.

On July 28, 2018, it was announced that Amazon had given the production a series order. On January 11, 2019, it was announced that Melanie Marnich had joined Bell as co-showrunner and executive producer for the series. In December 2019, it was announced Lulu Wang would serve as an executive producer on the series, while also writing and directing multiple episodes.

Alongside the initial development announcement, it was reported that Nicole Kidman would star in the series. In May 2021, Ji-young Yoo was cast in the series. In June 2021, Jack Huston and Sarayu Blue joined the cast. In September 2021, Brian Tee joined the cast.

Filming locations included luxury restaurants in The Murray, PMQ, Sevva in Prince's Building. Other locations included Mei Foo Sun Chuen, Lok Wah Estate, Ladies Market in Mong Kok, Cheung Sing Restaurant in Tai Hang, Victoria Harbour and the historic Mido Café. The filming in Hong Kong in 2021 generated quite a bit of controversy because Nicole Kidman was allowed to bypass the straight quarantine rules of the time, angering a great many local residents who were not allowed to move around freely after entering Hong Kong, without mandated hotel quarantine.

The series premiered on January 26, 2024. It is not available in Hong Kong itself.

Expats makes multiple changes to major characters from the book. In The Expatriates, Margaret is a quarter-Korean woman with a white husband, while in the show she is a white woman with an Asian husband. Hilary, a white woman in the book, is portrayed by the Indian-American Sarayu Blue. Essie and Puri, Margaret and Hilary's respective housekeepers, are only side characters in the book, while the series gives them a larger role. The show changes Charlie, Mercy's male friend from Columbia, to Charly, a female native of Hong Kong. Also absent is Julian, a young boy Hilary adopts in the book.

The series also shifts the location and timing of certain events. In The Expatriates, Gus vanishes during a family vacation to Seoul, which Expats changes to a Hong Kong marketplace. Consequently, much of the show focuses on Margaret's paranoia about her neighbors' potential involvement with the disappearance, which does not happen in the book.

The ending of Expats makes several changes to the book. The book ends with Hilary and Margaret visiting Mercy in the hospital with her new baby, while the show ends with her still pregnant. Most notably, Margaret in the book can achieve closure without knowing her son's fate, while the show ends more ambiguously, with Margaret deciding to remain in Hong Kong for the foreseeable future. Series creator Lulu Wang said she interpreted the ending as Margaret splitting her time between Hong Kong and America and choosing to continue searching for Gus as an immigrant rather than an expat.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 85% approval rating, with an average rating of 7.3/10, based on 59 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "By turns emotionally devastating and icy, Expats is a challenging drama made riveting by an ace cast and creator Lulu Wang's deft direction." On Metacritic, the series holds a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The series received generally positive reviews from critics who praised the performances of the cast; however, Nicole Kidman's performance divided critics. While Isabella Soares of Collider called it "Nicole Kidman's Best TV Performance", Lucy Mangan of The Guardian commented that "the feeling that [Nicole Kidman] is running on the fumes of her talent is hard to avoid". David Tusing of The National News noted that while Nicole Kidman "shines as Margaret", "the star of the show" is Sarayu Blue, "who delivers a career-defining performance as someone torn between expectations and her own desires".

Saloni Gajjar of The A.V. Club said "Nicole Kidman is the big hook, of course, but Kidman isn’t the only marvel. Her co-stars, Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo, are equally powerful, helping to tell a profound story about grief, loss, and the burden of trying to move on". Gautam Sunder of The Hindu recommended that "Expats should make the case for Nicole Kidman to cement her reign as the queen of current-day prestige television dramas". Steve Murray of Arts Atl criticized the casting as "Nicole Kidman is playing a character at least 10 years younger than her actual age. It strains credibility in a show that already feels synthetic".

Ben Travers of IndieWire said "Expats expertly breaks life down into parts, before bringing it all together again in a moving, unshakable portrait." Fletcher Peters of The Daily Beast observed that this show “continues to present Kidman as one of the most gripping actresses in TV—if not the most gripping. This won’t be the first review — nor the last — to praise Kidman in particular. But it must be said: She’s an absolute revelation as Margaret. Insecure about her living situation but confident about her wealth, emotional but never over-the-top, understated but powerful, Margaret has a handful of intricacies that Kidman perfectly balances.”

One of the most common criticisms of Nicole Kidman's performance was that her playing a depressed middle-aged white woman had become a tired trope. Joel Keller of Decider said, "Nicole Kidman feels like she's in the phase of her career when she playing one depressed, wealthy, touched-by-tragedy middle-aged wife and mom after another, and while her performances are always terrific, the trope has gotten old"; "the only thing we can think of is Big Little Lies or The Undoing, and that it's the same story in a different locale". Josh Bell of CBR concurred and noted that "Nicole Kidman has now played variations on this same fragile upper-class housewife several times, and she doesn't bring a new approach to this particular character", and "Amazon's Expats is more of a luxurious soap opera than a crime drama, and its meandering focus is one reason it ends up a disappointment". Janet Paskin of Bloomberg said of the series that "it’s bleak, and it’s boring. Not a lot happens. The characters agonize, make predictably unfortunate decisions and say things they regret. Overall, they hold themselves apart. Their deepest thoughts are expressed in voiceover, not to other people".

Amazon Prime's decision to produce two series in Hong Kong about expatriates – the other one being Exciting Times – was criticised as being insensitive towards the city which was suffering from a rapidly deteriorating political situation under the Hong Kong national security law imposed by the government of the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong's newspaper of record, the South China Morning Post, referred to the series as "tone deaf" and out of touch, because author Janice Y. K. Lee is the daughter of Korean immigrants who left Hong Kong for the US with her family when she was 15.

Leading actor Nicole Kidman's exemption from the city's mandatory 21-day in-hotel quarantine regime was also criticised as she arrived by private jet with bodyguards on August 12, 2021, while the Hong Kong authorities responded that the quarantine exemption was granted "for the purpose of performing designated professional work, taking into account that it is conducive to maintaining the necessary operation and development of Hong Kong's economy". Residents objected to what they considered grossly unfair treatment, and internet users also reacted negatively. Several lawmakers expressed concern over the exemption inside the legislature. Responding to the controversy, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau denied that the exemption violated existing policies, and said that the crew would have to be fully vaccinated and comply with quarantine exemption requirements identical to those made available to bankers. While one person said that the series would bring good publicity and jobs to Hong Kong, dissident artist Badiucao said that "the communist-backed regime would use it as a soft propaganda program that will sugarcoat the lies in Hong Kong".

The series appeared on multiple critics and editors' lists of the best TV of 2024, including: