The <em>Expats</em> Episode That’s Practically a Stand-Alone Film
The best installment of the Hong Kong–based drama connects the privileged protagonists with a society they inhabit at a distance.
Expats, Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Janice Y. K. Lee’s best-selling novel The Expatriates, is a slow-burn drama following the lives of three American women in Hong Kong in the aftermath of a tragedy. Each protagonist deals with complicated feelings of grief as their lives overlap, with the affluent Margaret (played by Nicole Kidman) serving as the story’s anchor.
Yet in the series’ splendid fifth and latest episode, titled “Central,” Margaret doesn’t appear until nearly 40 minutes in, and the women’s troubles fade into the background. Instead, the show brings into focus the people who have been hovering around the margins of the main characters’ lives: their
