Nine Perfect Strangers review: Series shot in Byron Bay realigns our TV chakras

If you are looking for your next lockdown binge, Amazon Prime’s new series – starring Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Asher Keddie – has premiered with stunning images of the Northern Rivers.

The Northern Rivers’ stunning locations shine in Nine Perfect Strangers, the new series premiered by Amazon Prime Video.

If you are looking for a lockdown binge, the new series starring Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Asher Keddie is now available.

Based on the best-selling book by Liane Moriarty, some of the executive producers include Kidman, McCarthy and Moriarty herself.

The eight-part series takes a look at the wellness industry, a type of business that dominates in this area.

The stars aligned in Byron Bay to film Nine Perfect Strangers

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The first three episodes have been released already, with one episode released weekly until September 22.

The show follows nine very different people who arrive at Tranquillum House, a mysterious wellness retreat nested in Cabrillo, California, which promises “total transformation”.

The place is run by the enigmatic Masha (Kidman), a woman who used to be a powerful CEO until she was shot in a parking lot.

Kidman is brilliantly creepy as Masha, and her interactions with the other characters are always charged with a sense of a puppeteer talking to her puppets.

Characters like Masha live on the Northern Rivers; I have met some that react to people like she reacts to her guests, with a creepy smile and a sense of superiority, but I presume that as the episodes go on, Masha may develop into a more complex character.

The other-worldly ‘wellness consultants’ at Tranquillum House talk and move like in a haze, the kind you see at local spas, and it was great to see one having a cheeky smoke before the next guests arrive.

We have all been there.

There are elements of Byron culture that are unmistakable: the block-coloured linen clothes, the bright jewellery, soft-spoken voices but intense eye contact, and a yurt for gatherings.

Of course, there was a yurt.

If you haven’t danced, meditated or had a spiritual awakening in a yurt, you have not really lived on the Northern Rivers.

Or so they say.

The nine people who meet in that yurt are complex, emotionally charged, unravelling people who are perfect for TV, the same types we used to welcome at the airport every week for their ‘Byron experience’.

The Northern Rivers looks amazing in this series, the story is fantastic, the direction is precise and the acting on point.

This is one of the best premieres for a series this year.

If anything, this series may prove a great marketing hook for people travelling to the Northern Rivers looking for some of that wellness ‘thing’ we do so well here, once lockdowns and movement restrictions end.

In the meantime, we can only dream to be at a luxurious retreat treated like Hollywood stars.

I’m hooked and I can’t wait for the next episodes to drop.