[imagesource: Netflix]

You must have seen or heard about the new Netflix series taking the world by storm at the moment, Maid.

The series is a slightly more dramatised adaption of Stephanie Land’s New York Times Best-selling memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will To Survive.

If you haven’t already jumped in, it is about a young, single mother’s survival and resilience as she navigates homelessness, America’s “impenetrable bureaucracy”, the “crushing cycle of domestic abuse”, and her gruelling job as a domestic worker for some of the world’s wealthiest folks in Washington.

There are too many Catch 22’s to count, and the difficult situation might be a challenge to watch for some, but ultimately, it is “tender television” notes The Guardian:

The past two years have made plain how precarious life is, and how quickly things can change. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Netflix’s biggest hits of 2021 are both about desperate people pushed to their limits.

As Squid Game dominates the headlines, it is Maid – quieter, but no less devastating – that is generating word-of-mouth buzz.

In fact, it’s estimated that Maid will be streamed by 67 million households by the end of its first month on the platform, putting it on track to beat The Queen’s Gambit as Netflix’s most-watched miniseries.

The stories of strong women prevail.

Viewers can’t help but invest in this limited series, largely thanks to the nuanced performance of Margaret Qualley as Alex, “a character who seems so real as she falls through the cracks”.

It also helps that one of the more heartbreaking and heart-making relationships in the series, the one between Alex and her mother Paula, sees the latter played by Qualley’s real-life mother, Andie MacDowell:

Image: Ricardo Hubbs / Netflix

Maid is a part of the current television vein that portrays emotional abuse, emphasising how difficult it is to prove this type of abuse is taking place.

The series’ magic is how we are put in Alex’s head, immersed in her experience via some interesting film and story-telling techniques, which is why Maid never becomes full-fledged “poverty porn”.

The show stayed with me too after watching it recently, but I couldn’t help shake a little anger after realising how relative poverty is.

Where Alex, as a homeless, penniless, desperate, single mother, had a car and the availability of assistance from a welfare system, no matter how broken,many disenfranchised people in South Africa have far less and nowhere to turn.

Like any good TV show, though, at least Maid makes you think:

Ultimately, it is a show that asks what comes easily, and to who. It is about how performative kindness fails those who need real help, and how quickly things can unravel when someone has no one to turn to. There may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel – but Maid takes no short cuts in getting there.

Check it out:

[source:guardian]