Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Everything Is Fine’ On Hulu, A French Drama About A Family Dealing With Cancer And Dysfunction

Family dramas tend to have similar formulas: The trials and tribulations of a dysfunctional but loving family who has to deal with dramatic situations that range from tiny annoyances to life-and-death circumstances. The key to the show is if the family is one viewers will want to spend time with. That’s the situation with a new French family drama on Hulu.

EVERYTHING IS FINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Two women walk down a dark Paris street, a clown striding behind them.

The Gist: Both women duck into storefronts, and one of them, Claire Vasseur (Virginie Efira) waits until the clown passes, then follows him. She pushes him over and starts kicking him as he’s down. Just as the blood begins to flow past the clown’s dislodged red nose, Claire comes out of her daydream.

She’s with her boyfriend Antonio Larrea (Eduardo Noriega) at a mediator’s office; they’re there to sign a custody agreement for Antonio’s daughter Lou (Camille Bouisson), with his skeptical ex-wife Caroline (Sandra Choquet) on the other side of the table. During the conference, Claire gets a text from her nine-year-old niece Rose Lafarge (Angèle Roméo) saying “They killed Alphonse.”

Alphonse is Rose’s stuffed bunny; her mother Marion (Sara Giraudeau) is sterilizing it and other things that are going to go into the recovery suite Rose will be in after her bone marrow transplant. Rose has a rare form of leukemia, and the transplant will increase her chances of survival, though she’ll still have a tough battle.

Marion and Claire’s mother, Anne Vasseur (Nicole Garcia), is a psychotherapist famous for her books that talk about using adversity to make you stronger. She’s on a train with her publisher, Philippe Deschamps (Hippolyte Girardot), and her publicist when she gets the text about Alphonse. The publicist tries to ignore the evidence she sees in front of her that Anne and Philippe have more than just a longtime professional relationship.

At the hospital with Rose’s grandfather, Pascal (Bernard Le Coq) Anne tells her to beat a pillow and give the cancer the face of someone she wants to defeat. Pascal seems to be wistful about Rose’s health predicament, but Anne is in business mode; she wanders away from him when she gets a call about another one of Philippe’s authors wanting to meet with her.

Caroline brings Lou around to his and Claire’s apartment; she wants to talk to Antonio about Lou getting another case of lice, but he’s not there. Claire has other things on her mind, namely getting a replacement for Alphonse. She puts Lou in her car and drives 90 minutes away to a shop that has the hard-to-find stuffie. While she’s negotiating with the store owner, who had just closed up shop, she goes back to the car to find that Lou, whom she left sleeping in the back, is gone. She’s not gone long, but Antonio does have to come to the local police station to bring Lou home. When Caroline gets wind of it, she uses the opportunity to file for full custody of Lou.

Marion and her husband Stéphane (Yannik Landrein) pick Claire as the third person who can visit Rose in her sterile suite after the transplant, which Anne finds out about from the psychotherapist assigned to the case. The author that wanted to meet Anne tells her that she’s ready to go public about Philippe’s sexual assault history with young female authors who work with him and she wants Anne to be a part of that. And Marion and Claire’s flight attendant brother Vincent (Aliocha Schneider) reluctantly takes an overnight shift with Rose at the hospital, despite his noted fear of them.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Everything Is Fine (original title: Tout va bien) is reminiscent of recent-vintage family dramas like Parenthood or Brothers & Sisters.

Our Take: Creator Camille de Castelnau isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel with Everything Is Fine. There really is no need when it comes to a family drama; the key to the success of any show in this genre is whether we want to spend time with this family or not. And, after the first hour, we definitely want to spend time with the family at the center of this show.

The throughline of the show is going to be Rose’s transplant and her struggle to recover, but de Castelnau and her writers make sure to show that life goes on for the rest of the Vasseur family, even if they are all dedicated to being around Rose and making sure she’s being cared for well.

The Vasseurs are fairly typical of a family at the center of a family drama; lots of love but also lots of dysfunction. Much of that dysfunction flows from Anne, whose narcissism is evident in her selfishness and the confidence in which she thinks her self-help methods can apply to everything in life. Claire is more resentful of Anne than Marion is, but despite the tense relationship Anne has with her kids, she’s still there for them.

Which is why this family is enjoyable to spend time with; they look the same as most families. People with flaws, people who screw up, but people who rally and protect loved ones who need them. It took some time for us to discern just how everyone is related to each other, and we’re still not sure what role that Vincent will play in this family dynamic — it could be that he uses his job as an excuse to stay away from the drama when he needs to — but by the end of the first episode, we were ready to see more.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: With Cass Elliot singing “Dream A Little Dream Of Me,” the sisters go back into the bar where the family is riding out the transplant operation, and we get a view of the evening on the street outside.

Sleeper Star: Angèle Roméo is endearing as the strong, intelligent Rose. It makes us want to root for her character even harder as she goes through the transplant and recovery.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Anne learns from the other offer that Philippe propositioned her, Anne tells her that “I’ve known Philippe for 30 years. He’s not violent,” the other woman responds by saying, “He asked me really nicely.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The family at the center of Everything Is Fine looks like a pretty normal family, who’s dealing with everyday drama while one of its youngest members is fighting for her life. That’s the formula for a successful show in this genre.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.