Best Interests Is a Heartwrenching, Exceptionally Acted Depiction of Every Parent’s Nightmare

You should probably know—or perhaps have already guessed—that nothing about Acorn TV’s newest limited series Best Interests is an easy watch. Everything about the show is well done, from its stars to its script, but its subject matter is beyond difficult, the story of a parent’s worst nightmare, rendered in tender and shocking detail. There’s pretty much no way anyone is making it through this series without crying (a lot), and yet it’s likely one of the most important we’ll see on screens this year. 

To put it quite clearly: Best Interests is gutting television, a deeply emotional story about a complicated topic that offers no easy answers, quite frankly because there aren’t any. The four-part limited series (all of which were available for review) tells a heartbreakingly specific tale of one family’s crisis, even as it wrestles with big philosophical questions about life, death, disability, and virtually everything in between. It’s a difficult, often harrowing watch, a series that’s unflinching in its honesty and powerful in its message, without ever passing judgment on any of its characters or doing anything so pedestrian as picking a side in this impossible emotional debate. It is in no way easy viewing, but perhaps that’s precisely what makes it feel so necessary. Attention must be paid. 

The story follows Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and Andrew Lloyd (Michael Sheen) and their two daughters. Eldest child Katie (Alison Oliver) is reserved and self-sufficient, traits we learn she has developed out of necessity in a family that’s forced to dedicate most of its time and energy to the care of her younger sister, Marnie (Niamh Moriarty), who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy. The series opens with Nicci and Andrew returning from a much-needed holiday. It’s immediately evident how good getting away on their own has been for both of them, even in a played-for-laughs scene where they try (and laughingly fail) to shag in a train toilet. But their carefree demeanor is short-lived—almost as soon as they’re home, Marnie’s back in the hospital with a chest infection, leaving her unresponsive and on a ventilator. Her doctor Samantha (Noma Dumezweni) says the words her parents have been dreading since Marnie was a child—-it’s time to discuss withdrawing the extraordinary treatment measures that are keeping her alive.

Nicci is adamant that Marnie can recover, insisting that she has beaten the odds before and begging doctors to do everything in her power to keep them alive. Andrew, for his part, begins to have doubts about his daughter’s quality of life, particularly as Nicci considers taking legal action against the hospital. The pair ultimately end up taking opposite sides in court, as a judge attempts to untangle the idea of what’s really in Marnie’s “best interests” and, in doing so, the series delves into everything from science and opinion to quality versus quantity of life, hospital protocol, and who makes decisions about how care is administered—and to whom—in broader society.  

Horgan and Sheen are tremendous together, and series creator Jack Thorne’s script gives them plenty of meaty material to work with, from flashbacks detailing the early days of Marnie’s diagnosis to raw, full-throated battles over her treatment plan. The pair are never anything less than fully believable in their frustration and grief, and their relationship brims with the weight of the long history behind it, whether they’re laughing darkly over hospital vending machine crisps or hurling shockingly cruel invectives at one another. However, despite their differing opinions on Marnie’s care, the palpable love each has for their child is evident in every scene. Hogan plays Nicci as a ferocious, unstoppable force, fully and completely absorbed in the singular goal of her daughter. Sheen’s performance is quieter but no less wrenching, as Andrew slowly grows increasingly convinced Marnie’s fight isn’t a winnable one and internalizes his anguish in a way that his wife does not.

Oliver also does some incredibly nuanced work as Katie, the eldest child who so clearly longs for her frequently absentee parents’ attention even as she realizes why they often cannot give it to her in the way she would like. (A scene in which Nicci and Andrew must leave five minutes into Katie’s band recital because the hospital called to tell them Marnie had a seizure is heartbreaking in its complexity.)  Best Interests smartly balances its present-day hospital scenes with flashbacks of the family during happier times, allowing us to not only see a clearer picture of the Lloyds’ lives together, but also of Marnie herself. As she tries on make-up with her mother, reads with her father, or learns a popular internet dance with her sister, Marnie becomes something more than an unresponsive child whose future her parents are feuding over. Instead, she’s presented as a real person with a story of her own, which allows us as viewers to better understand what her loss—and what her absence—will truly mean to everyone who loves her. 

Thorne’s script is sensitive and even-handed, surprisingly funny, and has a dedicated eye for detail. (A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-moment where Katie must dig through tubes and medical supplies to find toothpaste in a bathroom cabinet speaks volumes about the Lloyds’ lives.) Are there moments where it’s occasionally overwrought? Yes. This is not a story that’s particularly subtle in its larger themes involving the complexities of disability justice, institutional ableism, parenting, and end-of-life care. And you’ll need a boatload of tissues by the time you reach its final installment. But what makes Best Interests so unique is the empathy at its heart—for Andrew and Nicci’s choices, for Marnie’s condition, and for the doctors and legal professionals trying to do right by a dying girl. It’s a vanishingly rare thing for a series to be content to sit in the complexity of its own story, and allow audiences to come to their own conclusions about what it means, or what they might do in a similar situation. But it’s why this series is so powerful in the end.

Best Interests premieres Monday, February 17 on Acorn TV.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

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