Burning desires

Worlds collide in a powerful family drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington as very different mothers

- ADAM TANSWELL, RICHARD MCCLURE

NEW DRAMA

Little Fires Everywhere

From Friday 22 May, eight episodes as a box set, Amazon Prime Video

Reese Witherspoon is certainly on a roll right now. After starring as a wealthy mother in addictive mystery Big Little Lies, she followed it up last year by playing an ambitious TV reporter in The Morning Show, which co-stars Jennifer Aniston.

She won Golden Globe nominations for both performances, and now the Louisiana-born actor looks set for further plaudits in another compelling drama series, Little Fires Everywhere.

Based on Celeste Ng’s bestselling novel, the eight-parter stars Witherspoon as part-time journalist Elena Richardson, whose privileged life in an Ohio suburb is shattered when a raging fire destroys her beautiful family home. It’s quickly identified as an arson attack – but who is responsible and why?

To find out what happened, the action flashes back four months, as we discover more about Elena’s seemingly picture-perfect life with husband Bill (The Affair’s Joshua Jackson), a busy lawyer, and their four children, Lexie, Trip, Moody and Izzy, who is the rebellious black sheep of the family.

In contrast, we also meet Mia Warren (Scandal’s Kerry Washington) and her teenage daughter Pearl, who have a very different life from Elena’s family. Never staying in one place for too long, they sleep in their car as they search for somewhere to live in the neighbourhood.