Alice Halsey in Little House on the Prairie.Eric Zachanowich/Netflix
Netflix’s gorgeous new Little House on the Prairie adaptation makes for fine family viewing.
The often-sweet series is well-acted by half-pints and full-size steins alike in a cast chock full of Canadians.
It will also be fodder for important conversations around the dinner table about sibling rivalry, first loves and, of course, settler colonialism and the forced displacement of the Osage Nation.
That latter focus, well-timed to inform celebrations of the United States’ 250th birthday, may not jibe with everyone’s memories of the long-running TV show of the same name that aired on NBC for a decade starting in 1974.
But Netflix’s fresh take created by Rebecca Sonnenshine – with the Manitoba prairie standing in for the American Midwest – does not see young Laura Ingalls and her family setting up a homestead in the late 19th century in Walnut Grove, Minn.
Not yet, anyway. That will come in the second season, which has already been greenlit.
Little House on the Prairie’s first eight episodes instead cover the events of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1935 book of the same name, the third in a series of stories based on her childhood.
That narrative arc was dealt with quickly in a TV movie that preceded the older series starring Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon – maybe because it is not exactly heartwarming stuff.
It follows the Ingalls family illegally squatting on Osage land for a year in what will later become Kansas.
The climax is the exit of the Indigenous people of the Great Plains off their land, followed by the Ingalls themselves also, more rightfully, being evicted by the U.S. government.
From left to right: Crosby Fitzgerald, Luke Bracey, Corvin Mack, and Xander Cole in Little House on the Prairie.ERIC ZACHANOWICH/Netflix
Sonnenshine puts a thoughtful spin on this history that may soften reality a bit for young audiences, but at least doesn’t ignore it.
In her retelling, Charles Ingalls (Luke Bracey) takes his wife, Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald), and daughters Laura (Alice Halsey) and Mary (Skywalker Hughes) west from Wisconsin by covered wagon. They’re not just in search of living space, but on the run from family tragedy.
Charles doesn’t know that the land he is headed to homestead on is not officially available for settlement. He was misled by a pamphlet spreading misinformation.
This lets the Ingalls off the hook a bit – though also has a side effect of making its paterfamilias seem naive at best.
In a bracing scene that shows off the dramatic chops of both Bracey and Fitzgerald, Charles and Caroline have at it about the tenuous situation they find themselves in after months of back-breaking labour.
From left to right: Skywalker Hughes, Fitzgerald, Halsey, and Bracey in Little House on the Prairie.Eric Zachanowich/Netflix
Meanwhile, Laura – Halsey hits both innocent and headstrong notes well – is confused about the fear of her Osage neighbours. “Why would we come all the way to the prairie if we didn’t want to know them?” she asks.
That’s a line that comes pretty much right from the original book, though the writers of the Netflix series do underline the point.
The mournful loner John Edwards (Warren Christie), who ends up trading work with Charles, is first to say: “There’s nothing free about this land.”
Dr. George Tann (Jocko Sims), a Black doctor from the original book, likewise emphasizes: “It’s a myth that men can make it out here alone. It’s a pretty story, nothing more.”
To further make the case that it takes a village, Little House on Prairie often moves the action away from the Ingalls’ cramped log cabin to a village under construction nearby called Independence.
Wren Zhawenim Gotts and Halsey in Little House on the Prairie.ERIC ZACHANOWICH/Netflix
The inclusive storylines there owe something to Moira Walley-Beckett’s Netflix/CBC series Anne with an E, which put a new gloss on Green Gables for three seasons from 2017 to 2019, before being cancelled.
The Black experience is represented not only by Dr. Tann, but through a character named Emily Henderson (played by Minnesota actor Barrett Doss), who runs Independence’s general store with her brother.
Meanwhile, Laura develops a friendship with an Osage girl named Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts), who is the one to get her hooked on fiction. Perspective often shifts to that of Good Eagle and her parents, farmer and translator William Mitchell (Meegwun Fairbrother) and White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk).
Little House on the Prairie aims to tell the Osage side of the story that, at times, is a kind of family-friendly prequel to Killers of the Flower Moon. It indeed shares with that Martin Scorsese movie both cultural consultants and the Osage actor Talee Redcorn. He appears here in one episode playing Paw-Ne-No-Pa-She, the great chief also known as Governor Joe.
Fairbrother and Wapanatâhk are Ojibwe and Cree – and just two of actors from this side of the 49th parallel doing excellent work in major roles.
Alyssa Wapanatâhk and Cole in Little House on the Prairie.Eric Zachanowich/Netflix
Christie is another; his character John is given a tragic backstory, like many here rooted in the not-so-distant history of the American Civil War.
Montreal’s Rebecca Amzallag, meanwhile, plays a fun original character: An independent, pants-wearing frontier woman named Lacey Aubert, whose accent suggests she has moseyed down from some French part of Canada.
And is that Sudbury Kids Sports Reporter Jory Jordan from Shoresy in a small role? Why, yes, it is.
In many ways, Little House’s Canadianness made me more nostalgic for the Kevin Sullivan period movies and series that came out in the 1980s and 1990s than NBC’s series.
And that was even before Megan Follows herself made a surprise cameo in episode four, making Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea’s influence fully apparent.
It’d be a shame to lose all these characters on the trip to Minnesota – but we’ll see. This first season is just a starting point, and it’s a good one for the show and for the dinner-table talks.