Millie Came Home

About this drama

Millie is four. She was raised on a Kentucky farm with her dog Buddy, and she knows nothing about her wealthy family's money until butler Arthur brings her to the grand Whitmore Estate. Her first review of the mansion is a kid's review: the place is pet-free and dull. When she briefly goes missing, the family finds her outside chasing butterflies. I like what the copy does next, it stops the plot to introduce the household as five rigid, isolated lives. Graham is buried in work. Beckett quit football after an injury. Sloane is obsessively neat, Riley fights the family rules, and Evelyn runs everything on strict routines. Millie's innocence is the solvent, and the blurb maps the melt one name at a time: she revives Beckett's love for football, softens Sloane's perfectionism, and gets Evelyn out into the garden for casual time. Somewhere in there the family adopts a golden retriever named Sunny, and the quiet mansion gets some warmth in it. The back half is what keeps this from being one-note. Millie is settled but homesick, and she grieves for the farm. She rejects the luxury and the substitutes, and what she earnestly misses is specific, her farm chickens and the simple rural days. So the family goes to the farm with her, and fumbling through rural life is what finally makes them understand her. After they rescue a storm-frightened Sunny together, Millie takes both homes as hers, the farm memories and the estate, and the Whitmores build her a garden chicken coop. Laughter replaces the cold formality. Thirty episodes, gentle by design, and the copy calls it heartwarming family redemption, which is about right.

Tags