Little House on the Prairie review – this reboot will have you sobbing for a simpler world by episode four
Like tradwifery for children, this revamp of the 19th-century settlers show is a precision-tooled and well-oiled machine. It’s a cosy world full of faith, hope and the American way
I never actually watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie, though it bestrode my late 70s-early 80s’ childhood like a ginghamed colossus. This is for the simple reason that Michael Landon’s bouffant hair frightened me. Bouffant hair is such a bad thing. But so great is the power of both the cultural cringe and osmosis that even the most militant Britisher of a certain age has absorbed to some degree the story of the pioneering Ingalls family and its on-screen aesthetic. For the younger folk – it’s tradwifery for children.
The series was of course based on the books (and named after the third in the series, which was published in 1935 and hasn’t been out of print since) by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They in turn were an account, shaped for a young readership, of her childhood spent moving across the American West in the 1870s and 80s, settling and resettling in different states as her parents sought their manifest destiny.
Now, as the US celebrates – or at least, given the current difficulties under which it labours, marks – its 250th birthday, the TV series has been rebooted. It has kept the original name, and in all other respects is exactly the same.
Women and children are now sometimes sad. Because they are people too! Laura (Alice Halsey, convincing and charming) is a realistic child, by turns thoughtful, thoughtless, frustrated, frightened, brave and foolish, and the bickering between her and Mary (Skywalker Hughes) is shown to be not just the byproduct of siblinghood but the result of two deeply different personalities trying to find a way to get along. Laura also wears her cousin’s old cowboy hat as often as she wears a bonnet and is a crack shot with a catapult because one day girls will be able to be anything, you know.
Ma (Crosby Fitzgerald) now looks like a diffusion-range Nicole Kidman, helps build the log cabin with Pa and often wonders whether she did the right thing in following him to the arse end of nowhere even if he is markedly hotter than Michael Landon (I paraphrase, but not by much). She has a backstory (a career as a schoolteacher that she misses, a father who shamed the family with his drinking before he died of it and left them impoverished) and a spine (periodically reminding Pa of his duties to the family, standing up to the snobs and racists who dominate the nascent town’s social life). And Pa (Luke Bracey) is a man motivated by grief rather than greed or wanderlust. The family left in the wake of his brother George’s suicide, for which he blames himself. Out west, Pa makes mistakes through naivety or overconfidence but admits and apologises every time. He is A Good Man and an even better carpenter, so soon gets the commission to build a church, and Ma can start buying coffee again, without which you cannot be an American.
If you don’t fancy Pa – I mean, in order to round out the main cast – there is neighbouring homesteader John Edwards (Warren Christie). He lost his wife and daughters to the cholera and his gradual envelopment by the Ingalls clan will have you sobbing as if it were 1970 and the world was simple again by episode four at the latest.
There are also decent parts – a cynic might say just-decent-enough parts – and B-plots for Black, mixed race and Native American characters. The Mitchell family comprise a wise friend for Pa in William (Meegwun Fairbrother), a best friend for Laura in Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts), and eventually an ally, in White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk), for Ma – and an opportunity for viewers (bearing in mind that this is clearly a family show) to hear the other side of the settlement story.
It is exactly the revamp you would expect. The new LHOTP is a precision-tooled and well-oiled machine. All children’s and most adult problems are solvable within a one-to-three episode arc. Kansas may contain malaria, medicine-hoarders and mentions of how hard the war was but ultimately the vibe is the one we recognise: faith, hope and the American way will carry us cosily through. There are peppermint sticks in the general store, handmade quilts on the snug cabin’s beds and at least three songs and dances round the campfire per episode. You may take that as a promise or a warning as you wish.
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Little House on the Prairie is on Netflix.
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