Review: 'Margo's Got Money Troubles' is one of the year's best

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The TV legend David E. Kelley keeps up his remarkable decades-long run with the wonderful "Margo's Got Money Troubles," an Apple TV series adapted from a 2024 novel by Rufi Thorpe. 

Elle Fanning plays Margo Millet, a college student who has an affair with her professor (Michael Angarano), gets pregnant and has the baby. The professor, married with children, wants nothing to do with her. Margo lives with her roommates. Her whole support network otherwise consists of her mercurial mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer). She loses her job. She can't afford a babysitter. 

So, Margo has her money troubles. She finds an untraditional solution, to put it mildly, one that's best left unspoiled here.

Co-stars in the eight-episode series also include Nick Offerman as Jinx, Margo's estranged father and a onetime professional wrestling star. Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden and Nicole Kidman round out the ensemble.

MY SAY There's a shot toward the end of the first episode of "Margo's Got Money Troubles" that epitomizes what makes this such a special show.

It happens during Margo's baby shower. She opens her gifts and shows one off to Shyanne, who also became a mother at a young age.

The camera pushes in slowly on Pfeiffer as the song "Walk of Life," by Dire Straits plays. In that one brief, subtle moment, in which Shyanne does nothing but observe, the actress shows us an entire world.

There's the joy of this milestone, of becoming a grandmother. There's the fear and concern for her daughter, whose life is about to change forever. There's the desire to be the best possible person you can be in that moment, when the most important person in your life needs you as much as Margo needs her mother. And there's the sadness of the flash of recognition that maybe you can't be everything you want to be for her.

A screening of the first three episodes reveals that the series lives exactly there, where we all actually live, where nothing can be understood in absolutes, and where the highs and the lows coexist at the same time, in the same moment, in the same place.

The actors have been gifted with the sort of material you simply cannot find too regularly.

Fanning, one of the best in the business, gives a performance of uncommon richness and grace. She understands this person in a visceral way. There's strength and wisdom in the character, but also the sort of innocence that comes with being a young adult still trying to find your way, grappling with so much.

There's not a false moment to be found in the ways she and Pfeiffer develop their relationship, with all of its complications. Offerman stands out, too, turning a potential cliche in the distant dad into a compelling person stricken with guilt and regret.

He wants to be the best person he can, to do everything right, to show the great love he feels for his daughter and  grandson. But he's imperfect, just like the rest of us, and sometimes things don't work out exactly as you imagined they would. 

BOTTOM LINE It's the best new series we've seen in a while.