‘Lemony Snicket’—clever but creepy

If you’re one of those people for whom the book is almost always better than the movie, you might be pleasantly surprised by Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events—the Netflix series, that is.

Netflix’s miniseries treatment of Daniel Handler’s 13-book children’s adventure is likely happy news for Lemony Snicket fans unsatisfied by the limitations of the 108-minute 2004 movie version starring Jim Carrey. Of course, it’s unhappy news for the Baudelaire children, whose misery now stretches out across several onscreen hours.

Audiences meet sibling trio Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire just before seeing them become orphans—and the series doesn’t get much brighter after that. The children are shuffled from guardian to guardian, each more mysterious than the last, and chased throughout the season by Count Olaf (played deliciously by Neil Patrick Harris), who seems to care only about stealing the family fortune.

The Series of Unfortunate Events books won several awards for children’s literature, but don’t contain some of the more hopeful themes found in, say, the Harry Potter series.

For one thing, throughout the eight Netflix episodes (the first of three proposed seasons), it’s clear that the children, even baby Sunny, are the most logical people in their world. Count Olaf’s silly disguises dupe almost every adult in the children’s lives, and most of the few grown-ups who show them kindness are easily distracted by their own goals or fears—and often end up dead.

Violet, an inventor, often jury-rigs household objects to save herself and her siblings from danger. Klaus is a researcher whose ability with words also comes in handy. (Adults repeatedly patronize the children by explaining various vocabulary definitions to them, with Klaus always responding, “We know what that word means.”)

The children’s parents seem to be loving heroes initially, but even that myth is shattered at the end of the first season when we learn the Baudelaires may not have been who we thought they were.

Experts believe big shifts in logic arrive in the brain around age 9, and that’s what this plot pokes at so uncomfortably. Called “absurdist” and “postmodern” by some, both the books and the miniseries are an introduction to dark comedy, ambiguity, and the concept that not all stories have happy endings.

The miniseries raises adult themes that parents will need to address with children or preteens. Count Olaf tries to marry 14-year-old Violet in an attempt to steal her inheritance. Fire, snake venom, deadly leeches, and a furnace kill various characters.

The season finale introduces two men as “partners” (never fully explained, but joked about), and Neil Patrick Harris spends most of that episode “disguised” as a woman in yet another attempt to foil the Baudelaires and steal their money.

Some parents may decide against introducing such content at home altogether. If kids are ready—or if they have already devoured the books—A Series of Unfortunate Events may provide an opening for conversation about tragedies both general and specific, like the fact that child marriage really does exist.

Parents might also take the opportunity to discuss how to respond to authority figures who are wrong or just plain evil, as well as the concept of hope—whether the Baudelaires have it in anything other than their own abilities, and, by comparison, where ours rests.