Netflix’s announcement last year it had green-lit a new adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic book series immediately ruffled feathers. Podcaster Megyn Kelly issued a stark warning for the streaming giant on X: “If you woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie’ I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project”.
Now, that adaptation has arrived and, unsurprisingly, not everyone likes it.
‘The reboot that nobody needed’
Few things offer a more “sobering barometer of the current state of our politics” than how the “Little House on the Prairie” reboot became a “battle in America’s ongoing culture wars” before a cast had even been announced or anyone had watched it, said Jason Kyle Howard in Politico.
It’s a “particularly striking example” of how popular entertainment is politicised “precisely because” the original – in this case NBC’s version from the 1970s – is seen as “decidedly non-political” and has been enjoyed by fans of “all political stripes”. Ronald Reagan famously loved the show.
Those of us who watched the original will remember it with “misty-eyed nostalgia”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. This is the “reboot that nobody needed”. Created by Rebecca Sonnenshine, who brought in female directors for each episode of the first series, it includes “sympathetically portrayed” Native American characters who “take up a lot of screen time”.
The basic story remains intact: the Ingalls family “head out west to establish a new life on the prairie”, navigating a series of challenges and dangers along the way. As viewers, we’re invited to “envy” the pretty scenery and simpler way of living; the production design “fits neatly into the Instagram aesthetic” and the women’s immaculate dresses have echoes of a tradwife fantasy. It’s hard to “shake the feeling” that the show has been made for an audience with “short attention spans and a desire for social media likes”.
“Netflix did indeed woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie,” said Rebecca Onion on Slate Magazine. It makes a “deep bow to contemporary concerns about the politics of the source material”. Among the Ingalls family’s new friends are a Black couple and a French Canadian woman who “wears trousers and practises free love”. The streaming giant’s take with its “sassy and resourceful Ingalls sisters” and “full cast of multicultural” friends feels “sanitised in a way that’s sure to annoy ‘Little House’ purists”.
‘Gentle but gripping’ new take
“Is this ‘woke-ifying’?” said James Poniewozik in The New York Times. “Call it what you want”, but failing to feature Native American characters would have been a “conspicuous choice in an era of rich Indigenous stories like ‘Reservation Dogs’”. Using multiple voices to explore the story’s “underlying conflicts” is the “most interesting aspect of a familiar series”.
The “worst people you know” will likely complain the reboot is “woke”, said Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter. That’s because the Black doctor who featured only “briefly” before has been turned into a fleshed-out person with a “love interest and backstory”, and Indigenous characters have been introduced to “articulate the discomfort of being forced off their land in the name of Manifest Destiny”. If that makes it woke then “so be it”, but I’d like to point out the Ingalls remain the show’s “undisputed heroes” who are “fundamentally decent and empathetic people”.
Does the reboot get into the “racial-ethnic offences Wilder allegedly committed while writing her many books?” said John Anderson in The Wall Street Journal. “No.” But, like the books, it does explore the “well-founded fear that settlers had about the Native Americans around them, and the oblivious attitude of the pioneers toward the people they were displacing”.
Remaking the “beloved tale” was “always going to be a risk”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. But Sonnenshine has “navigated this potentially fraught undertaking with skill”. Cleverly, she lets audiences “take what they want” from the show, whether that means “indulging in the fantasy of living off the land or baulking at the show’s grittier truths”. Either way, it’s a “gentle but gripping” update.