Poster for The Durrells, with a group of white people, adults and children, sitting at a table in the shallows of the ocean

About:

Title: The Durrells (Season #1)
Released: 2016

Fix: British shows, dysfunctional family, beautiful Greek island scenery
Platform: Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime Summary:

Based on naturalist Gerald Durrell’s much-loved trilogy of novels, The Durrells in Corfu sees impoverished but sparky widow Louisa Durrell (Keeley Hawes, MI-5) make the radical decision to leave 1930s England to seek out a new destiny for her family.

FYA Summary:

So, this series began in 2016, and I honestly can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before a friend recommended it to me about a month ago. I mean, it’s charming and British! And it takes place on a gorgeous Greek island! AND it features several young adults! WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Once I started watching, however, I realized where I had been—in a peaceful mental plane where I wasn’t constantly exasperated by a fictional family who alternates between entitlement and maddening tomfoolery.

SO! It’s the 1930s, and Louisa Durrell (who lost her husband seven years ago) has had it up to HERE with her four children. Not coincidentally, she’s also developed a bit of a drinking problem. She’s so desperate to make a change that she sells the house and takes the family to the small Greek island of Corfu, a beautiful spot unchanged by time (i.e. they don’t have electricity). While I’m pretty sure the show states the reason why she picks this spot, I honestly don’t remember, and even if I did, I would still be baffled by why it seemed like a good idea to move to a country where you don’t speak the language and are in desperate need of money/jobs and have two children that should probably still be in school.

But reason has no place in the Durrell household! So the family arrives and luckily befriends the local taxi driver, Spiros, who speaks English and takes them to an empty house with a STUNNING ocean view. And they get to just live there! Louisa insists that the three older children (Larry, who is 23; Leslie, who is about 19?; and Margo, who is 15 or 16) get jobs, but they ignore her completely, while the youngest, Gerry, immediately starts capturing wild animals and putting them in the house. It’s literally a zoo at this place, y’all. Over the course of six months, none of them learn Greek; only one of them gets a job; all of them make TERRIBLE choices; and the best thing that happens is a litter of puppies they adopt that never seem to get bigger (like I said, there’s no time on Corfu).

Familiar Faces:

A pretty, middle-aged white woman with bob-length brown hair stands by a tree

Keeley Hawes as Louisa Durrell

I know Keeley from Bodyguard (which I should really do a Stream It for, honestly), and I vastly prefer her character in that show—which is saying a lot, because I kind of despised her? As Louisa, she’s a flighty, impulsive woman who genuinely loves her children but can’t seem to, like, manage any of them? I just found her to be pretty ridiculous and therefore couldn’t take any of her plights seriously.

A white young man with short brown hair and slightly large ears stares out from a window

Josh O’Connor as Larry Durrell

Josh’s career is really heating up; he was Prince Charles in The Crown, and he was Mr. Elton in Emma. And he’s starring in Challengers with Zendaya so you KNOW his star is on fire. As Larry, the eldest of the siblings, he is SO OBNOXIOUS. Because, you see, he’s a writer. I’m sorry, a Writer. And he can’t be bothered to get a job or help around the house because he’s busy tapping away on his typewriter, writing stories that apparently feature a ton of sex (and because he’s Larry, you know we’re not talking fun romance reads). He’s absolutely insufferable, so… I guess kinda similar to Prince Charles?

The rest of the kids are unfamiliar to me, though Milo Parker (Gerry) is in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but MAN do they all suck. Leslie is obsessed with guns and seems, to use a British term, daft, while Margo sort of just flits around and moons over a dude who is straight up awful. Finally, while Gerry is the least infuriating, he also spends the entire first season putting animals in captivity, and while I realize it was a different time, it’s still not appealing no matter how much the series tries to make it “cute.”

I will give a shout out to Jeremy Swift (Leslie in Ted Lasso, Spratt in Downton Abbey) who plays Dennis, the butler to the local Countess. My favorite thing about his character is that the series seems to think of him as mostly unlikeable when he might, in fact, be the most appealing person on the show!

Couch-Sharing Capability: Be Like Corfu (i.e. An Island)

Not a lot really happens on this show, so there’s not much to react to beyond very, very silly “problems” faced by the family. Sure, if you want someone to turn to while rolling your eyes, I guess that would be nice, but I watched this alone and am glad I didn’t try to force my husband to try it because I NEVER would have heard the end of it.

Recommended Level of Inebriation: Gin Is Louisa’s Your Friend

Alcohol will DEFINITELY enhance your enjoyment of this show. I recommend playing a little drinking game:

  • Drink once every time a Durrell assumes a Greek person speaks English
  • Drink twice every time you wonder how they have the money to eat
  • Take a shot when Gerry, after having an epiphany about the wrongness of keeping animals in cages, decides to release them and then CHANGES HIS MIND

Use of Your Streaming Subscription: It’s All Greek To Me

Look, I’m sure I sound like a jerk, tearing apart a little Masterpiece Theater show about a “down on their luck” white family that, like, Sarah, is just trying to be a nice escape for people okay and IS based on a real life memoir and isn’t pretending to be prestige television but y’all, this series had six seasons. SIX. And I desperately want to understand why!!! Even my mom, who loves anything and everything on PBS, never made it past Season 1. In her words: “I just couldn’t deal with those people.” (I resent the fact that she never told me NOT to watch this show but whatever.) So maybe you’ve watched it and enjoyed it? And if so, PLEASE comment; I promise I will be very civilized. Unlike the Durrells.

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Sarah lives in Austin, and believes there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure, which is part of why she started FYA in 2009. Growing up, she thought she was a Mary Anne, but she's finally starting to accept the fact that she's actually a Kristy.