Last May, I reviewed the novel “Apples Never Fall” by Liane Moriarty. I categorized it as a “Tennis Beach Book” as it is light, entertaining, and easy to read. It was recently adapted into a miniseries by the Peacock streaming service. I enjoyed the book so much that the show immediately rose to the top of my viewing queue.
The series follows the broad strokes of the book’s original storyline. However, new material was added to fill the time since it was spread out over seven episodes. Additionally, the streaming adaptation includes modern themes of sexuality and current events that were not in the original book. Prospective viewers should be advised that there is a significant amount of adult scenes and themes in the television version.
While Moriarty set her book in Australia, Peacock production relocated the events to Florida. Additionally, the show necessarily had to follow the masterfully crafted non-linear timeline used in the written form, but it was sometimes difficult to follow all the jumping around. The disjointed lack of continuity was a challenge, even for someone who had already read the book.
While Moriarty’s original tennis storylines were plausible, it was hard to overlook some of the production errors. One glaring issue is that the action shots of tennis are laughably bad. Whatever credible tennis knowledge Moriarty imparted in the book was apparently discarded in the screen adaptation.
One bright spot was the casting of Annette Bening and Sam Neill as the recently retired tennis academy owners, the two primary figures in the story. In fact, the acting across the board was well done. The same cannot be said about the storyline adaptations, which transformed the flawed but understandable protagonists described by Moriarty into completely unlikeable and incongruous characters on screen.
Anyone who has read the book will have the unique experience of knowing the plot twists in advance. However, the gratuitous additions and updates to the story relegate those key aspects so far into the background that they seem irrelevant to the new plot. The final climatic scenes of the show left gaping holes in the motivations underpinning each character’s actions.
I still highly recommend the book “Apples Never Fall” to tennis fans as a fun and easy “beach read.” While the miniseries is visually stunning and certainly entertaining, if you are one of those people who looks for consistency in storytelling, it might be unsatisfying. IMDB currently has the show rated at 6.8 stars. I would probably lean a little lower than that, but am arguably influenced by knowing that the book was so much better.
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