Pieces of Her

Toni Collette plays Laura Oliver, a woman with secrets, which are exposed during a life and death situation beyond her control.

This 90 minute story has been stretched over 8 episodes, requiring long pauses, unnecessary diversions and constant illogical behaviour by the main characters. As others have written, the worst character is the daughter (played by Heathcote) who whines a lot and seems to have a permanent state of confusion etched upon her face. Other characters are thinly written; the dialogue is poor and the pacing is glacial. The whole thing is just disappointing.

As a side note, this is another example of a Netflix production where the shooting location (Sydney, Australia) looks nothing like the setting of the story (Georgia, USA). Everything from the streetscapes, the flora, the lighting - all is wrong and it's distracting. Many shows are shot in different locations than the story's setting, but surely there needs to be a mild resemblance to the actual.

Alright into the second episode I knew I couldn't handle how freaking annoying the loser daughter is...I can't stand how immature and dumble-ing bumbling fumbling and mentally weak she is, it's too much. Unfortunately my husband wanted to keep watching. So here we sit with me smh every 2 seconds at her ineptitude and having a hard time paying attention to anything else that is happening, even Toni Collette and Gil Birmingham aren't helping me stay interested.

I thought this would be one where I might read the book because maybe it was just Netflix that made this that bad, but then read a few other reviews that said the daughter was just as annoying in the book, sooooo that's that.

Is this series finished? Hard to tell from the last episode but it does wrap up the main story line.

There's a good, slow reveal mystery here based around flashbacks to a time in the United States in the 1980's not covered much these days. It also revolves around abusive and manipulative men psychologically tormenting women much like your average Lifetime movie but it's better than one of those.

The main problem with this series is that the character we follow isn't the tormented personality played by Toni Collette but her daughter as we follow her frantic path of discovery about her mom's mysterious past. Unfortunately the daughter isn't given enough sympathetic characteristics to elevate her above a 30 year old screw-up. She's initially portrayed as helpless but suddenly becomes a pro at evading professional security goons out to get her. Since, unlike all the other main characters, we are given almost nothing about her (except that she's a drawing artist), it's very hard to follow and care. And the other characters are for the most part flawed people.

....the daughter is annoying as fudge. I mean why don't you go around with a red flashing light on your head and a sign on your back which says 'I am the girl you're looking for' that would be less conspicuous than how she's moving around.

For the most part it isn't bad.... I think. I mean the daughter character annoyed me so much that I think the rest was okay.

I'm a big fan of Toni Collette but she's in a dog of a series with this one. Collette's a natural actor with a wonderful range. The same can't be said for her costar Heathcote who acts her character instead of inhabiting it. The limp script doesn't give her much help.

It's worrying that Netflix keeps raising its prices while its offerings keep getting more amateur with each day. The collective writing, acting and direction has taken a deep dive the last few years. This series is just another example of the slide, hoping that casual viewers will not be able to discriminate bad shows from good ones.