Back in the day I was real hot and heavy with Liane Moriarty’s books. I’ve since fallen off, which is why I never read the book that this miniseries is based off of. Both the book and the series share the same name, Apples Never Fall, but I actually won’t be able to weigh in on how closely the series sticks to the source material.
The show centers on the Delaney family. They are bright and mostly shiny on the outside, but we meet them, the siblings more specifically, a few days after their mother presumably went missing. We learn pretty early on that the Delaney bunch is a tight-knit one, though that doesn’t mean they don’t have their fair share of unsavory histories. Especially given that no one here is younger than their mid-twenties at least. Each episode in the series is dedicated to a member of the family as they try to uncover what happened to their mother. We first get an episode about the family as a whole, where we learn Stan and Joy have just retired and sold their tennis academy. Tennis is big in this family, and as a fan and player of the sport, that was really cool.
We also learn that in retirement, they are bored stiff and lashing out at each other. Then one day, a young woman knocks on their door asking for help. She goes by the name Savannah, and ends up making herself a quasi-member of the Delaney family for the next several months. She disappears almost around the same time Joy does. Nothing suspicious about that. Both Stan and Joy are overwhelmingly welcoming to her, while their children are rightfully weirded out by it. They do their best to placate her and their parents, but none of them are really ever truly warm towards her. And Savannah definitely has some ulterior motives.
As we work through each character’s episode, we flash back to past events while also trying to move forward in the investigation to Joy’s whereabouts. Logan, the youngest son, was convinced by his eldest brother not to buy out the tennis academy from his parents. He’s also got other interests, though he can’t quite muster the courage to move away from his family with his serious girlfriend. Amy, the eldest daughter, is an aimless hippie who hides her failures from her family for fear of judgement. Brooke, the youngest Delaney, is due to get married but cheats on her fiancé with Savannah. She’s also the only one who truly seems to love their father the most. Troy is the eldest Delaney, a hedge fund bro who cheated on his wife and has a long-stemming hatred of his father.
Of course, none of the siblings seem viable as the one to be involved with their mother’s disappearance, but the same can not be said for Stan. He was kind of on the road to being a tennis pro when injury struck. He met Joy on the tour and they’ve been together ever since. This dude is intimidating as hell! He’s got a wicked temper and never ever goes easy on his children. It’s no wonder almost none of them are that close with him. And thanks to a number of other very suspicious things, he’s suspect number one in Joy’s disappearance and possible murder. The only thing is, is that it’s too easy, and I knew the whole time they were using him as a red herring.
What actually ended up transpiring with Joy’s disappearance, played out in the final episode, is a fun twist, but ultimately kind of a let down. I think I could have been more on board with it if there was even just one character in this show that wasn’t the absolute worst. Or annoying. Every single one of them was annoying. That made me feel a little less sympathetic to their plight. Oh, well. Not the worst miniseries I’ve seen, but I feel like they keep doing Moriarty’s works a disservice.