Meryl Streep, who has done everything, once played a woman dying stoically of cancer, who objected to the aesthetic notion that less is more. “Less is not more,” her character declared. “More is more.” It’s one of my favorite quotes, even if I don’t live by it, believing that less can be a fine thing, especially when it comes to television.
Which brings us to the doubts viewers may be having about extending the compulsively satisfying and succinct HBO drama “Big Little Lies,” which had been touted as a seven-episode “limited series” when it aired in 2017. I’m glad to report that, in this case, more really can feel like more. Did we need more? No. Did we demand it anyhow? According to HBO, we did.
With considerable fanfare — and the addition of Streep to its A-lister, triumphant-sister cast — “Big Little Lies” returns today with the same expert dissection of a Northern California beach community’s exquisite grappling with wealth, grief, hyperactive parenting and general dissatisfaction. How they suffer so. How gorgeously they suffer. That’s great if one comes to the show merely for the pristine Spotify playlists and a little vicarious gossip among these 1-percenters, who all send their children to Otter Bay Elementary School, an institution so desirable and so kowtowing to their demands that no one seems to care that it’s public.
If, however, you’re coming back to “Big Little Lies” for a well-honed plot and the tension around the keeping of its biggest lie, then you’ll probably notice some desperation in the first three episodes (which were made available for this review) to prolong a story that wasn’t all that prolongable to begin with.