Worldbuilding is one of the most important ingredients in any TV show, but it’s easier with some genres than others. For fantasy and sci-fi, spectacular elements like magical kingdoms and distant planets make for great foundations to build lore on. Comedies and dramas grounded in the real world, however, have much less to work with. Making the familiar feel distinctive is no easy task.
That makes one Netflix adaptation particularly deserving of recognition. Across three seasons between 2017 and 2019, it created a setting with more personality than many fictional universes that can boast elaborate maps and centuries of invented history. Its secretive world feels vast and governed by peculiar rules that make it seem quite unlike our own reality despite being set there. Even more impressively, it achieved all this across just 25 episodes. That show is Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Based on Daniel Handler’s 13 novels, published under the name Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events follows the three Baudelaire orphans as they bounce between adopted parents and foster families all while pursued by the murderous Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris). It has the sinister humor and theatrical atmosphere of a quirky fantasy, yet there’s no magic or supernatural elements to be found. Despite this, the world of A Series of Unfortunate Events feels distinct and different, and how the Netflix show turned everyday reality into somewhere so convincingly alien deserves celebration.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events Makes The Real World Seem Strange And Terrifying
Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events may take place in the real world, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like a nightmare-like inversion of reality, both in terms of its aesthetics and in how the lives of the Baudelaire orphans play out following the death of their parents. Violet (Malina Weissman), Klaus (Louis Hynes), and baby Sunny (Presley Smith) are delivered from one incompetent caregiver to another, all while the authorities ignore the blatant schemes of Count Olaf and fail to keep them safe from him. They’re thrown into a system that definitely overlaps with the foster-care institutions of the real world, but operates with a disturbing incompetence that’s far removed from the genuine article.
As far as the aesthetics are concerned, A Series of Unfortunate Events creates its own world by making everything and everywhere look and feel slightly wrong despite being familiar. Its exaggerated sets make ordinary environments like a cheerily decorated living room seem capable of swallowing children whole. The unease this creates isn’t helped by the fact that the adults treat the obvious environmental dangers as perfectly reasonable.
The visual elements of A Series of Unfortunate Events‘ worldbuilding are helped by the show’s deliberately scrambled relationship with history. There’s fashion, architecture, and technologies from various technologies, and this is once again presented as totally normal. Telegraphs and walkie-talkies, for example, are both treated like contemporary devices. The modern appears side-by-side with the antique in ways that technically could happen in the real world, but obviously aren’t the norm.
Patrick Warburton’s Lemony Snicket is the final masterstroke that ensures the reality presented by the Netflix show feels unique. He delivers his solemn narration like someone documenting an existing world, complete with personal regrets and information he cannot yet share. Every digression suggests another story happening beyond the children’s immediate predicament. Snicket’s musings make it clear that this world has a past just as rich as its present, making the absurdity of A Series of Unfortunate Events feel bizarrely plausible.
Netflix’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events Perfectly Understood The Source Material
The convincing worldbuilding of A Series of Unfortunate events is definitely an achievement. However, the world of the Baudelaire orphans wasn’t created for the series. It came from Daniel Handler’s novels. This doesn’t make the creative vision of the show less noteworthy, however. Quite the opposite. Just as much as Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events stands out for its small-screen worldbuilding, it’s also an example of a near flawless literary adaptation. The Netflix show completely understands why the A Series of Unfortunate Events books are so beloved.
Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events succeeds as a show because it recognizes that the appeal of the books extends far beyond eccentric locations and elaborate misfortune (a mistake made by the divisive 2004 movie). The world of Handler’s books is a thematic exploration of children’s frustration with adults who possess authority without the intelligence or compassion to deserve it. It’s a setting whose central logic is that bureaucratic procedures are the governing power in all things, even when it blatantly puts the lives of children at risk. Any successful adaptation needs to bring this thematic core to screens, which the Netflix series definitely did.
The recurring failures of characters like Mr. Poe makes the world of both the A Series of Unfortunate Events Netflix show and books terrifying without requiring anything supernatural. The fact that those responsible for protecting Violet, Klaus, and Sunny repeatedly refuse to see danger that readers can is an essential part of why Handler’s novels are so engaging. The Netflix series recognized the importance of this, and that it was much more essential than the timeline of specific events or established visual details.
The show itself proves this, too, since the A Series of Unfortunate Events TV show makes multiple substantial changes to the timeline of the narrative. For example, it brings the Baudelaire’s connections to the shadowy V.F.D. organization forward so that their influence can be felt from the moment Violet, Klaus, and Sunny meet Count Olaf. Many other TV adaptations of books would have been lambasted for making such a huge alteration to the established story. A Series of Unfortunate Events gets away with it because the change helps to support a small-screen version of the narrative whose spiritual heart is a flawless recreation of everything that makes the source material so beloved.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
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