While the plot summary sounds heavy, Netflix’s new miniseries has a surprisingly light touch.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Netflix miniseries Maid is that there is levity – optimism and hope born out of gritty determination.
Because there is easily another version of this story that is so mired in the heavy circumstances of its titular character, a young woman named Alex, played with doe-eyed charm and weight by Margaret Qualley (The Leftovers, My Salinger Year).
Inspired by Stephanie Land’s memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive, Maid’s themes are in its source material’s title. But by placing a fictional character at its centre its gives creator Molly Smith Metzler the nimbleness to really balance the tone so that Maid never feels like a chore.
One night after her partner Sean (Nick Robinson) gets so drunk he punches a hole through the wall next to her head, Alex takes her daughter Maddy (Ryley Nevaeh Whittet) and leaves.
With no qualifications and not much of an employment, only a beaten down car and $18 in her wallet, Alex has few choices. A frustrating trip to social services results in little more than a referral to a cleaning service which pays $37.50 to clean an entire mansion – and that’s before the cost of the uniform and supplies, which comes out of Alex’s dwindling reserves.
In her case, every cent counts, literally. Every $2.41 of petrol pumped is $2.41 she doesn’t have to feed herself or Maddy.
As a visual motif, there’s an onscreen running total of Alex’s finances whenever any money comes or goes, a stark reminder of the precariousness of living below the poverty line.
Securing a roof over their heads while also fighting for custody of Maddy in a court system that’s not set up to understand the nuances of many women’s situations, there is no time to process the emotional maelstrom of her life.
And her mother Paula, played by Qualley’s real-life mum Andie MacDowell, is a hot mess, a woman who can’t be relied on to stay in the conversation, let alone be a responsible grandparent.
Similarly, Sean’s mother proves to be a volatile personality, and those insights suggest there is a strong generational aspect to these cycles of poverty and struggle.
Alex keeps going because she has to. And it’s that pluck that makes Alex such a compelling character to follow.
She’s not conventionally determined in the Erin Brokovich mould, it’s a grit born out of survival which means it’s layered with exhaustion, exasperation and disappointment.
But Qualley makes the character so watchable as she reclaims a life that had slowly been taken away, almost by stealth.
That’s the other aspect of Maid that really impresses, which is how it engages with the many shades of abusive in a relationship. Alex initially believes she hadn’t been abused because Sean hadn’t touched her, but she knew something wasn’t right.
It’s through the experiences of the women she meets – social workers, other women – that she comes to understand that abuse comes in different forms that don’t leave a physical mark.
Maid isn’t an overwrought or melodramatic series, and it’s not naïve or idealistic. It deals with the hardship of female poverty with a straight approach, and always centred through the experiences of this sympathetic character that you want to root for.
Maid is on Netflix from Friday, October 1
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2021-09-30 09:14:08Z
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