TV Show review
August 18, 2021 · TV-MA · Returning Series
Woke Score
Lower is better
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Nine Perfect Strangers.
Woke representation / casting
Ensemble features typical modern-TV mix of ages, races, ethnicities, and body types that fits stressed urban professionals. No visible identity signaling, quotas, or storylines that treat race or gender as central conflict drivers.
Woke political dialogue
No explicit activist or identity-based speeches. Season 2 includes brief personal criticism of wealth and weapons investment through one character’s arc, presented as individual reckoning rather than systemic ideology.
Identity-driven story themes
Stories revolve around personal trauma, grief over a lost child, addiction recovery, writer’s block, and romantic entanglements. No racial identity, queer central plots, gender-role deconstruction, or social-justice arcs appear.
Western institutional / cultural critique
The wellness industry faces light skepticism and Season 2 lightly questions extreme wealth and arms-industry ties via the billionaire guest. These remain secondary, resolve personally, and lack activist language or anti-capitalist manifesto framing.
Review
Nine Perfect Strangers follows nine stressed strangers who arrive at a remote wellness retreat run by the enigmatic Masha, played by Nicole Kidman. She secretly doses them with psychedelics to force confrontations with their traumas, grief, addictions, and relationship problems. Season 2 moves the action to an Alpine facility with a new group and adds a subplot involving a wealthy businessman. The series stays focused on personal psychological drama and individual healing with no audience-visible emphasis on identity politics, racial themes, gender activism, or social justice messaging.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The series adapts an original novel without reported identity-driven alterations to source characters or events.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Isolated commentary suggests the show mocks cancel culture or Gen Z attitudes through one character in Season 2. No organized complaints, petitions, or widespread claims that the series pushes woke or DEI content exist.
Creator track record context
Main creators (Kelley, Butterworth, Moriarty, Byrne) show low activist patterns focused on legal or domestic drama. Contributors including Sharzer and especially Moore raise the combined score modestly through prior queer- and identity-centered work, yet the finished series does not reflect strong ideological carryover.
Production
