Apples Never Fall review: This one's for the put-upon moms

People love a good mystery, from true-crime podcasts to fictional page-turners like the Liane Moriarty novel on which Peacock’s miniseries Apples Never Fall, which premieres March 14, is based. There are certain tropes involved, familiar touchstones that, at this point, fans of the format have come to crave. For instance, these tales are almost invariably about a woman (the perfect wife/mother/girlfriend) turning up missing, and in true Dateline fashion, the husband is usually the prime suspect—such is the case in ANF as well. Seldom, though, is the missing woman anything other than young, beautiful, and white. Apples Never Fall examines what happens when the missing person is not a twenty-something knockout, but an old, beautiful, and white mother of grown children who’s retired and in her sixties. How much do we care then?

Aerial shots of Palm Beach, Florida’s skyline, waterways, mansions, and marinas usher us into the world of the Delaney family, helmed by two tennis-stars-turned-coaches, who ran a school for kids (until their recent retirement) and raised four now-adult children together. These sunny vistas are set to a song that seems to scream that something gruesome has occurred. We cut back and forth between these pretty scenes and Joy (the incomparable Annette Bening), the matriarch of the athletic Delaney bunch, on a little jaunt about town. First she’s taking in a lovely bike ride, next she’s palming a perfect apple at the market, then, suddenly, we cut to her bike on the ground with a twisted tire, its back wheel still spinning, a trail of apples leading, Hansel-and-Gretel-style, to blood on its chain.

Joy is missing. Never the type to go to the store without texting her children prior to her departure, always the one to call back within five minutes whenever they’re in need, she leaves her family distraught and confused when she drops off the face of the Earth that day. Not only that, but her husband Stan (Sam Neill) is acting super weird about it. He’s making weak excuses for her all over the place. Depending on who asks, it’s just a head cold, a mall outing, or running errands. Her kids aren’t sure they buy any of it, and it’s their speculation, their longstanding projections and personal prejudices, that lead us through the twists and turns of Apples Never Fall.

It’s down to only two viable suspects very early on in the show. As mentioned earlier, Stan is suspect number one, but then there’s this other person, an outsider who calls herself Savannah. She winds up on the Delaneys’ front porch with a gash on her head one day and upends their lives. Then, she stays with them a while as a sort of surrogate daughter, only to take off several months before Joy’s disappearance. Joy’s kids, of course, think of her instantly, because her whole deal is sketchy as hell.

If mysteries are your jam (perhaps you devoured the smash Liane Moriarty adaptation Big Little Lies), then this could be your next fix. But if you’re a middle-aged mom with grown kids, this series may more deeply resonate with you. It underscores the many frustrations of thankless decades of not only mothering but maintaining a household, of being the default parent who washes the bottles, cooks the meals, and carries the totality of all of your loved ones’ emotional baggage. It’s a substantial weight, and this show offers several brief monologues during which Joy Delaney, in flashbacks, elucidates the many bummers of maternal life. We get why she would likely leave of her own accord, and we can see why murder isn’t the only possibility here.

There are some true standout performances in this, too. Annette Bening is an absolute force of warmth and conviction as Joy (she’s also an executive producer on ANF). Jake Lacy, a bit typecast for sure, still shines as the responsible, financially solvent son, Troy, and this role offers him more depth and soul than his White Lotus character had going for him. Then there’s the amazing Alison Brie: She steps in and really rescues a part that, in less capable hands, could fall into the realm of caricature.

Brie plays the sensitive second-oldest, the one Joy calls the family’s “searcher.” She’s clearly meant to be a little quirky, the hippie weirdo of the bunch, so she gets lots of lines about reiki and matcha and whatnot (of course she’s a life coach). But when her storyline finally drifts beyond the punchlines about hosting “hope circles” or being an adult in her thirties renting a room from a landlord/roommate in his mid-twenties, her performance plunges emotional depths in a way that’s beautiful to see. At the same time, she channels her Community chops to make some jokes that could be cringey actually work without sacrificing her character’s truth or sense of dignity. She’s kind of responsible for the only laughs in this. The other cast members do a serviceable job as well, exploring the various projections members of a family place on one another as their illusions crumble before them in light of their mother’s disappearance.

Unfortunately, despite the stellar cast and intriguing premise, the action feels a bit predictable throughout most of ANF. There are some characters who are genuinely one note, too, like the detective in charge of the investigation. Right away, we learn that she is newly back from maternity leave and still pumping at work, which could be either validating for viewers to see or eye-opening if the women in your life have kept their mothering world hidden from you. But that whole thing is just sort of there. She’s mostly the snarky, no-sense type of TV detective we’ve seen over and over again. Savannah is an endlessly frustrating character as well. Everything about her feels too obvious, too neatly drawn, too convenient, and too easily cast as villainous.

Ultimately, it’s good that a show like Apples Never Fall exists in the realm of television, if only so that mothers who occupy the same emotional space as Joy Delaney can see themselves, their stories, and their values represented in this form. Will it hit with the impact of its stars’ previous successes? Likely not. It has a bit less going on overall. But it paints an interesting enough family portrait to stare at for a while.

Apples Never Fall premieres March 14 on Peacock