New York (AFP)

After the immense success of "Big Little Lies" the successful American screenwriter David E. Kelley returns with "The Undoing", a new mini-series on, again, the good society shaken by a murder, but in New York, this time.

There is more than one similarity between this new project, broadcast by HBO in the United States and OCS in France, and "BLL" which, for its first season alone, had won 4 Golden Globes and 8 Emmy Awards.

At the start, a microcosm built on money and very established codes, in which a foreign body unloads which will destabilize the whole.

One by one, the secrets are revealed and the masks fall, taking certainties with them.

It is also the return of Nicole Kidman, already awarded for her portrayal of a woman with a complex personality in "Big Little Lies".

In this new mini-series, the first episode of which airs Sunday on HBO and Monday on OCS, she is Grace Fraser, a psychotherapist, at the center of the story as "Big Little Lies" was more of a choral series.

Just like in "BLL", "The Undoing" gradually erodes, over six episodes, the impeccable image of its existence.

"The series is very focused on the psychological journey of this woman," explained to Australian channel Foxtel Nicole Kidman, co-producer of the two series.

For British comedian Hugh Grant, who plays her husband, this miniseries is a "Scandinavian-style thriller, with a big puzzle that I hope will work", as he explained on HBO.

The Scandinavian touch is provided by Danish director Susanne Bier ("Brothers" and the mini-series "The Night Manager"), and completed by a stripped down and disturbing aesthetic.

Accustomed to romantic comedies, made famous for his roles as a good-looking Briton, Hugh Grant shines here in a darker register, full of roughness, towards which he has turned in recent years ("A Very English Scandal" in particular).

If the American critic was generally seduced by the acting, she regretted that the scenario was not more fleshed out and is running out of steam.

Creator of a host of successful series, from "Ally McBeal" to "Goliath", David E. Kelley is already working on a new project.

Still with Nicole Kidman, he is preparing the mini-series adaptation of "Nine Perfect Strangers", another novel by Liane Moriarty, the author of "Big Little Lies", for the Hulu platform.

© 2020 AFP