Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.
We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.
Why? Over the next eight extraordinarily tight episodes that nevertheless do not skimp on developing either the emotional fallout or the propulsive plot, a rich array of characters-cum-suspects arrives before us, each with a personality and backstory revealed in peeling layers. Marissa’s husband, Milo’s father, Peter (Jake Lacy, whose work in A Friend of the Family and The White Lotus is making him the go-to guy when you need an all-American hiding a multitude of secrets) is foremost among them. Yes, he takes care of his younger brother Brian (Daniel Monks), disabled in a childhood accident for which their sister Lia (The Bear’s Abby Elliott) blames herself and has the years of addiction and rehab (for which Peter uncomplainingly pays) behind and possibly ahead of her to prove. But one of the many questions All Her Fault is interested in is whether there is any such thing as a truly altruistic deed, let alone a truly good man? But how bad would you have to be to kidnap your own son?
The penalty women pay for motherhood … Sarah Snook and Duke McCloud in All Her Fault. Photograph: Sarah Enticknap/AP
The Irvines’ own nanny, Ana (Kartiah Vergara) has taken some rare time off at the time of Milo’s disappearance. Is this suspicious? When she returns, she denies ever even speaking to her fellow nanny. We are shown that this is a lie. Her employers and the police must settle for it simply being implausible. Marissa’s best friend and colleague Colin (Jay Ellis) arrives to support the family. So too does Jenny, extending the hand of sorrow and friendship in a way that shocks their husbands and the police, though not as much as Marissa’s eager acceptance of it. Is this suspicious? To the women – to women generally, I suspect, and to men less so – it makes perfect sense.
They briefly bonded at a dreadful school social after being pursued for voluntary stints on the PTA by its chair, the quintessential frenemy and stay-at-home-mom Sarah Larsen (Melanie Vallejo), despite the fact that they are both working people. (Sarah, whose combination of passive aggression, Machiavellian talent and sweet bitterness is much more finely drawn than usual, is one of the many extra miles run by the creators and a perfect example of the investment in detail that marks potentially formulaic dramas out from a herd of other prestigious beasts). Marissa and Jenny recognise that they are both consumed with the rage and guilt that define working motherhood (yes, yes, of a rarefied kind – Ken Loach this is not, but neither is it trying to be) when your husbands are still not quite across this idea of child-rearing as a joint endeavour. So what that Jenny feels guilt at having let Carrie into their lives (it was her responsibility to find the nanny. But her husband knows he would have done a better job of checking Carrie’s references if it had been his)? Marissa doesn’t blame her. Marissa blames herself for … everything. (Sarah blames her too. So does the media and the public, when it gets wind of the story). The bond the mothers have only strengthens under pressure, and – there are a dozen extra miles run in the secondary storyline developed here – strengthens Jenny herself.
All Her Fault is fantastically well done. All the carefully planted seeds come to fruition. All the narrative cogs turn and interlock fast and seamlessly. You come for the terrifying premise and stay for the absolute pleasure.
All Her Fault aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now. In the US, it is available on Peacock.
