Netflix’s number 1 TV show is one of the best period dramas it has made

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Just one month on from the lurid spectre that was the fourth instalment in the Monster franchise, Netflix has dropped a period drama set around the same time that is by far and away among its best. East of Eden is hard to ignore if you’ve been on the streaming platform of late: Florence Pugh’s mesmeric face has been top billing for days, with 6.5million views in its first week. Based on John Steinbeck’s 600-page-plus epic, the seven episodes tell the story of the Trask family across several generations, starting in Civil War Connecticut with brothers Adam and Charles (Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist). Their relationship is soured by their father’s clear game of favourites, long before Cathy (Pugh) enters their lives one night and wreaks volcanic change. Cathy, whose past includes sex work and the slaughter of her parents (it’s a long story), marries Adam and is forced out west to start a new life. After giving birth to a new set of Trask brothers, she violently abandons Adam and the newborns. The rest of the sweeping drama makes up the 1955 adaptation of East of Eden, starring James Dean. The Second World War screeches into view, as the new Trask men repeat the mistakes of their elders. Based on John Steinbeck’s 600-page-plus epic, Florence Pugh, Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott star (Picture: Netflix) The show has racked up 6.5 million views in its first week (Picture: Netflix) The series has been adapted by Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed that first adaptation of Steinbeck’s classic novel. The result is a magnificent show, with a quality and subtlety I assumed Netflix were no longer interested in making. When you cast your eye along what else is doing numbers this week, it’s a buffet serving up mediocrity and grizzled favourites: that Monster season, the abysmal Willy Wonka reality show, various acquisitions and The Gentlemen. Then, atop it all is East of Eden: a sweeping and sumptuous literary adaptation. The show’s brilliance rests on its fantastic performances and writing that avoids the period drama pitfalls of being drab or sluggish. Cathy (Pugh) enters their lives one night and wreaks volcanic change (Picture: Netflix) Pugh’s show-stealing turn as malevolent, complicated Cathy will receive the most praise. But a close second is Hoon Lee, who plays the Trask family’s Chinese-American housekeeper, Lee. To my understanding, he has been inflated from the original novel (for my sins, I have not read it, but now plan to). The drama’s much-needed tenderness stems from him, as one half of an interesting platonic marriage-of-sorts with Adam, raising the twin boys Cathy ditched. Seven seems a strange number of episodes. Indeed, an eighth instalment, dedicated to Lee’s brief hiatus away from the Trask family, was scrapped for cost reasons. Surviving scenes have been integrated into the rest of the show. Will you be watching East of Eden? Want to get bespoke updates on the TV shows you love? Sign up to Metro's TV newsletters and tell us which ones you can't get enough of The price tag must have been as epic as the show’s scale: the numerous, lavishly shot sets, equally numerous characters, the different actors playing those characters across the ages. Kazan has said she had to cut additional scenes from every single episode to stay within budget. Perhaps as a result, it is well-paced. But in other ways, you can feel that salami-slicing: Faist doesn’t get the look in you would imagine or hope for. I could have spent a whole other episode watching the magnetic trio orbit one another. Joseph Zada stars in the latter episodes in James Dean’s role from the 50s film (Picture: Netflix) Far from that absorbing start, the last episode is the weakest. It recreates much of the 50s film, with Joseph Zada in the Dean role, using some out-of-place magic realism and heavy-handed tapping on the thematic questions of fate and whether badness is inherent. Kazan has leaned on her heritage when promoting the show and it is clear that remaking what her grandfather accomplished was a demanding task. That is its own family saga, separate from this one, which has still been gorgeously rendered for a new generation. Here’s hoping they keep opting for Pugh’s monster over whatever version Ryan Murphy is serving up elsewhere on Netflix. 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