Every streaming service has an original that makes it essential. Netflix kicked things off with House of Cards in 2013. Hulu dominated awards and conversations with The Handmaid's Tale. Amazon Prime had audiences buzzing with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Disney+ arrived swinging with The Mandalorian. AppleTV+ entered the streaming wars with compulsively watchable The Morning Show and kooky Dickinson, but half a dozen shows later we have its entry of truly stirring, triumphant television: Little America.
The half-hour anthology series from Alan Yang, Kumail Nanjiani, and Emily V. Gordon follows immigrants families from around the world as they experience the everyday victories and upsets of the American Dream. Each of the eight episodes focuses on a different individual's journey (based on true stories) — a conventional immigrant journey with just a dash of the absurd: the pre-teen motel manager, the raffle-crazed single mom, Zachary Quinto in a highly disturbing wig.
At its high points, the show is beautifully uplifting, never saccharine or melodramatic. It steers away from the overtly political or distressing, but characters' quiet heartbreak in the face of adversity makes for some of the most evocative scenes. Family and freedom mean everything in these stories, and only when one or both are sacrificed as a cost for American life do we realize how precious that life is for so many. Characters spend years separated from parents or children in order to ensure a better life for their loved ones in the land of opportunity.
Fans of Yang's Master of None will feel the echoed sensibility of "Parents" and "New York, I Love You," which visited the lives and histories of new or peripheral characters. Every episode of Little America is bilingual (one has barely any dialogue) and immerses the viewer in its protagonist's world without preamble. The cast is comprised almost entirely of unknowns, at least to the average American TV viewer who might recognize a face here and there, and their combined performances manage to strike a consistently stirring, authentic tone.
The writers and directors — eight of each — execute this perfectly in that we never feel intrusive. It's a privilege to join these characters on their journeys; Kabir (various actors) in his quest to learn every word in the dictionary, Beatrice (Kemiyondo Coutinho) as she starts her own business, Farhad (Shaun Toub) as he goes to war with a pile of rocks. We want to belt Kelly Clarkson with Zain (Adam Ali) from across the globe, and that relatability is pervasive throughout the series. Though it feels trite to say so, we connect with these characters on a deeper level that's easy to forget once caught up in one's own life.
That's what Little America illustrates so deftly: Most of our lives aren't magnificent or remarkable. We don't live in the grandiose fantasies or devastating dystopias that we see in television and film. Human existence is mostly defined by small pockets of wonder amid mundane routine; a high-stakes squash competition, a delicious cookie, a big raffle prize that took years to win. But in those moments, everyone feels like a superhero or a star, and there's nothing more American — more human — than sharing that feeling
Little America is now streaming on AppleTV+.
