All Her Fault review: frothy and fun thriller that will have you sloshing along

One shot in All Her Fault tells us exactly what sort of show we’ve gotten ourselves into. Sarah Snook, recently adorned with Tony and Olivier Awards for her West End and Broadway tenure in the Sydney Theatre Company’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, is perched on a bench beside American star Dakota Fanning.

Garbed in big coats and jumpers, they gaze fretfully into the middle distance while gripping generously poured glasses of wine on the deck of an expansive seaside mansion with an infinity pool.

Yup, All Her Fault is the latest addition to the burgeoning trade in wine-mom thrillers. Slow-teased, exceedingly soapy scandals and closely guarded family secrets are revealed alongside missing people, shocking murders, dastardly blackmail and comical depictions of high-pressure careers that don’t appear to require much face time.

Steely-eyed Nicole Kidman has wigged out in prime examples of the genre, including The Perfect Couple, Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies. Cate Blanchett had a bash in Disclaimer, which feigned a prestige sheen but was similarly fizzy.

Generally adapted from a best-selling novel that flies out of airport bookshops, an astonishing amount of these productions are also filmed here but feign to be from over there. It might be one of our sneakiest American exports. Such is the case with All Her Fault.

From Dublin to Chicago to Melbourne

All Her Fault is a co-production between US streamer Peacock and Australia’s Binge. It sees the Liane Moriarty-adjacent Irish author Andrea Mara (also an associate producer here) lending her Dublin-set chart-topper of the same name to American screenwriter Megan Gallagher.

Gallagher shifts the action to Chicago, while co-directors Minkie Spiro, a Brit, and Kate Dennis, an Australian, shoot in the Melbourne suburbs or Southbank, Docklands and St Kilda.

There are lots of giggles for Melburnians. Glimpses of Jeff’s Shed, trams reflected in glass doors, gum trees and the Port Phillip foreshore are all craftily spliced into stock footage of the windy city.

Nightmare scenario

Succession star Snook plays Marissa Irvine, a high-flying wealth management type who massages commodities and may or may not be in over her head. She’s in business with Colin, played by Insecure star Jay Ellis, a former (or possibly current) gambling addict who spends way more time at Marissa’s home than might be expected.

But it’s actually Marissa’s fairly useless, loosely business-minded husband Peter, played with smarmy charm by The White Lotus star Jake Lacy, whose out-of-office adventures soon see him accused of an affair.

There are more pressing matters at hand, however. 

In the opening moments of All Her Fault, Marissa heads from the financial coalface to collect their young son Milo (Duke McCloud) from an SMS-arranged playdate with Jacob (Tayden Jax Ryan). He’s the son of a similarly stressed-out mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning), who works in publishing.

But the thing is, when she gets there an older woman answers the door. She’s never heard of Milo. Jenny doesn’t live at that address.

All Her Fault fires up for heavy fallout

Billed as every parent’s worst nightmare, the situation is a gripping hook and it tears fissures in every direction. Of course, as the title suggests and our misogynistically-skewed world insists, it’s all Marissa’s fault.

She was too busy to pick Milo up and too trusting of a text message purporting to be from a parent she likes, if doesn’t know all that well. It took her almost five hours to figure out that Milo was missing and his backpack tracker is switched off.

“What was she thinking? She wasn’t.”

Never mind that Peter was equally unavailable and oblivious. It’s a glaring fact that everyone overlooks – from prank callers to snappy journalists and radio hosts, as well as Beast of War actor Lauren Grimson’s school committee snitch Sarah, standing in for all cross-firing crumb maidens.

The injustice draws Jenny and Marissa closer. It helps that Jenny’s teacher husband Richie (Thomas Coquerel) is also pointless on the home front. The bond strengthens despite others igniting doubts over how much the mothers’ suspiciously out-of-town nannies knew.

There are questions to be answered. Why did the kidnapper pretend to be Jenny? Or take Milo instead of Jacob? And How is Jenny’s book-spruiking career connected to a suspicious call made by Marissa just before everything kicked off?

Watch the All Her Fault trailer

Pointing fingers

Snook is spectacular as a mum on edge, unfairly pushed closer to the ledge, with Fanning a perfect pairing as someone a little too nice to be fully trusted.

Of course, this sort of show needs more, more, more to fuel its finger-pointing binfire, so we also have Peter’s obnoxiously loud and scrap-happy sister Lia (The Bear star Abby Elliott) offering unwanted opinions left, right and centre.

Lia has her own troubled childhood to deal with, after an incident left their other brother Brian (KAOS warrior Daniel Monks) living with disability. It’s something Brian has in common with the young son of Detective McConville (Michael Peña), a man not unafraid of breaking a few rules while trying to figure out who took Milo, and who finds himself dealing with the messy aftermath of the Irvines’ choices and his own at home.

What is the deal with Marisa’s business partner Colin? Why was almost everyone up to something on the day of the disappearance? And how does an abundant froth of frequent milkshakes fit into the rapidly expanding picture? Pinging back and forth between flashbacks and forwards or sideways jumps, characters who appear to be one-scene cameos come back into play.

Gallagher’s take on Mara’s meandering plot is increasingly knotty, verging on outright silly in spots. But that’s half the fun of these oooooh-inducing shows. All Her Fault actively encourages us to get as sloshy while watching it as Marissa and Jenny do with their fermented grapes-supplied coping mechanism.

All Her Fault streams on Binge from 6 November.

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