Considering the epidemic of shows being canceled too early, I’m all for things getting more than one season, but I have to admit that the choice to renew Nine Perfect Strangers instead of keeping it to a limited series always seemed a baffling one. While the viewership for Season 1 was high, no doubt thanks to its A-list ensemble, it wasn’t particularly critically acclaimed and didn’t seem to make much of a cultural impact. The fact that the show covered Liane Moriarty’s entire novel (with some creative liberties, of course) made it seem prime for a one-off, as did the fact that the first installment dropped way back in 2021.
While I’m not sure who asked for a Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2, I’m not mad we got one. While it has some of the same issues the first installment did, Season 2 is ultimately bolder, weirder, and more compelling in many ways. It doesn’t always work, but it certainly doesn’t play it safe, and the risks it takes feel refreshing if also occasionally baffling.
What Is ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Season 2 About?

Image via Hulu

Though there are callbacks to Season 1, Nine Perfect Strangers doesn’t rely too heavily on them. Add in the fact that Nicole Kidman’s Masha is the only returning character, and the show feels as close to an anthology as you can get without technically being classified as such. Season 2 quickly catches us up to speed about what’s been happening with Masha since we last saw her — she’s under federal investigations, but she’s also being praised as a disrupter for her work with psychedelics — before wasting no time shipping her off to the Austrian Alps to an old-world health spa run by Helena (Lena Olin) and her son Martin (Lucas Englander). It seems like the place may offer her the fresh start she needs — that is, if she can overcome the history she has with it and some of its guests.
Then there are the titular strangers — Brian (Murray Bartlett), a socially anxious puppeteer who lost his popular children’s show after he had a meltdown that went viral; Agnes (Dolly de Leon), a former nun who has lost her faith; Tina (King Princess), a child piano prodigy who has lost her passion for music, and her supportive but overbearing girlfriend Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers). There are also two sets of parents and children: a sweet but awkward son named Peter (Henry Golding), who just wants to connect with his distant billionaire father David (Mark Strong), and uptight daughter Imogen (Annie Murphy), who struggles to get approval from her eccentric mother Victoria (Christine Baranski), who has brought along her young lover Matteo (Aras Aydin), much to Imogen’s dismay.
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Season 2 Has So Many Great Characters, So Little Time

The good news? All the characters in Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 are interesting and get a chance to shine. While many of them play into tropes — the selfish billionaire, the tortured artist, the cougar, etc. — they just as frequently subvert them, and their backgrounds and personalities are specific enough that they rarely veer into cliché or caricature territory. Agnes is particularly intriguing, especially with de Leon’s subtle yet powerful performance. She makes the former nun both grounded and mysterious, feeling like the heart of the show alongside Matteo, who has a beautiful speech in Episode 6 that acts as a pivotal moment and the thesis of the show.
There really isn’t a bad performance among the bunch. Baranski steals nearly every scene she’s in, constantly bringing the laughs, though her dynamic with Murphy, who has serious dramatic chops alongside her comedy skills, is full of real complexity and emotion. It’s also a delight to watch her and Golding play off one another, their relationship full of bizarre but irresistible rom-com charm. The same can be said of King Princess and Richardson-Sellers, who balance an easy, lived-in romantic chemistry with tense resentment simmering just under the surface. Bartlett has a strange task, with many of his scenes requiring him to act alongside a puppet, but he effortlessly pulls it off and offers a refreshingly nuanced take on cancel culture to boot.
The bad news, however, is that there simply isn’t enough time to dive as deeply as one would like into all of them. They each have enough potential to carry an entire series, but with the season’s eight episodes, some don’t even get a single installment dedicated just to them. In all fairness, there is crossover, of course — both obvious ones within families and some unexpected connections that come to light as the season progresses — but some change simply happens too rapidly purely due to time constraints. There are also Masha, Martin, and Helena’s storylines to juggle, which makes for a crowded, sometimes overstuffed field of characters. It doesn’t help that, while that trio gets some of the most screentime, it never feels quite as interesting as what’s going on with the secondary cast.
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Is Beautifully Crafted But Tonally Messy

Image via Hulu

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to get a little burnt out on shows that feature rich people traipsing around ritzy tropical oases, so I was excited to see Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 switch it up and feature rich people traipsing around a ritzy snowy oasis for a change. Frank Lamm’s stunning cinematography highlights the sprawling exteriors and lavish interiors, steeping us in history and luxury alike, and the score enhances it. The direction is also stylish, with bold camerawork and creative aesthetic choices that immerse us in the characters’ headspaces, particularly when they’re under the influence of Masha’s drugs.
It’s too bad these sequences aren’t always all that effective. It’s difficult to pull off a tripping sequence, so the fact that they’re so central to the plot acts as a detriment. There are so many dreamy hallucination sequences packed full of symbolism that we’re told are crucial to the characters’ journeys and evolution, but it’s hard, as an audience, to always understand exactly why that is. A more effective way to showcase this might be with more traditional conversations, though that would undermine a main aspect of the show. It’s a tricky thing that could potentially be solved if the audience felt less distanced from Masha, shedding her enigmatic status so we could be more privy to her specific logic. Positioning it as more of a sci-fi series and more clearly embracing those genre elements could also help, as right now, the dramatic thriller vibe isn’t quite working. The moments of suspense and edge are undercut by things being too neatly resolved.
Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 has its fair share of effective twists and even more excellent performances, though it can feel limited by its short episode count and the constraints of its premise and genre. While it’s an addition that doesn’t seem altogether necessary, it does more than enough to justify its existence and is an improvement upon the first season in many ways. The specificity of the characters makes them easy to care about and root for, and the remarkable Alpine landscape makes for a (literal) breath of fresh air and will serve as a nice, cool retreat as we approach the sweltering summer months.
Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2’s two-part premiere drops May 21 on Hulu, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday.

Watch on Hulu