Apples Never Fall: Annette Bening’s thriller is as unoriginal as an EastEnders plot

If you liked Big Little Lies, this is aimed at you.

It the third book by Australian author Liane Moriarty to make it to the small screen.

Nicole Kidman was the lead in Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies, and now we have Annette Bening in Apples Never Fall.

Bening’s character Joy Delaney has recently retired after selling the Florida tennis business she ran with her husband Stan (Sam Neill).

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Ready to give more time to her now adult children, Joy suddenly disappears and the family secrets unfold.

Not unlike Netflix’s The Perfect Couple (also starring Kidman), the outside world’s view of the successful and happy Delaney family is shattered.

The children lead the search for their mother, with suspicion falling on their volatile and violent father and also house visitor Savannah.

She’s an apparent victim of domestic abuse who showed up at the Delaneys’ door after jumping from her abusive boyfriend’s moving car.

She’s homeless, possession-less and moves in for a couple of months.

Savannah is a surrogate child for Joy who now that she has time to give to her children, finds they are too busy with their own lives.

Troy is a successful businessman with a confrontational relationship with his father. He turned down the opportunity to take over the tennis academy with his brother because he thought it a poor investment.

Amy is a “searcher” who’s still trying to figure out what to do with her life.

Brooke runs a failing business but can’t bring herself to tell her parents.

And Logan, who failed to make it as a tennis pro under his dad’s tutelage, can’t seem to break his ties with his parents and move away to Seattle with his girlfriend.

Think of them as a 90s boyband designed to appeal to different areas of the teenage market.

Stan Delaney is driven and respected in the tennis world, but his competitive drive makes him difficult to live with.

He’s moody, confrontational and violent as we see when he bloodies an opponent by hitting him with a tennis ball in the face.

Stan initially tells his children that their mother is sick but quickly admits that they’ve had a fight and that Joy has left.

However, he assures them it’s just a tiff and that all is fine and she’ll be back. A suspicious open gash on his cheek was caused by falling into a garden bush, he says with zero conviction.

The awkward title presumably extends into ‘... far from the tree’ and therefore the sins of the parents are reflected in the children.

After the introductory episode, each of the next seven (all available on the BBC iPlayer) follow a different Delaney and we learn that behind the Florida sun and West Palm Beach tennis club lifestyle there’s plenty of secrets.

The action flits between the past and the present with the helpful and slightly irritating on-screen prompts of ‘then’ and ‘now’.

In between pondering what’s with the devotion to three-word titles, you’ll spend most of your time trying to guess what the big twist is going to be in the end.

Is Stan really the victim of a husband-beating wife? Did Stan and the younger Savannah get together and plot the murder of Joy?

Apples Never Fall is a passable drama but it’s as original as the latest EastEnders plot and probably not worth your time.

However, there will be a market for fans of Big Little Lies hoping to relive a favourite series.

Spoiler alert – you won’t.