That Tiny Beautiful Things proves to be a tearjerker is hardly surprising, and the emotions intensify over the course of the eight-part season. To us, fresh off a devastating scene of young Clare and Lucas preparing for their mother’s funeral, it reads as a panicked expression of Clare’s deepest regrets.

To Rae, it’s a typically overwrought reaction from a mother who’s seemed increasingly unhinged. In 2023, Clare yells during a fight with her daughter Rae (Tanzyn Crawford) that if she were to die tomorrow, Rae would never forgive herself for saying such hurtful things. Scattered flashbacks reveal the precious and painful memories lying just beneath Clare’s troubled present: the shabby but cozy home, the abusive relationship with a mostly absent father, the close-knit bond with a little brother, Lucas (Owen Painter), and, at the center of it all, the love of a mother, Frankie (Merritt Wever), whose death by cancer at 45 disrupts the very gravity of Clare’s life. As the series digs deeper into Clare’s jagged edges, it becomes impossible not to feel for the wounded soul underneath. Hahn plays Clare with the fearlessness of an actor who knows the material is strong enough that she doesn’t need to beg for love, and her faith is richly rewarded after a few chapters. The words hold power even before we’ve had a chance to warm to Clare herself, or to click to the show’s combination of gimlet-eyed clarity and unabashed sentiment. While too much voiceover can feel like a cheat in some literary adaptations, Hahn’s poignant delivery makes the most of Clare’s full-hearted prose, much of it excerpted from Strayed’s actual Dear Sugar columns. Despite the “shitshow” that is her current existence, Clare finds herself flourishing as a writer for the first time in years, dishing out replies that muse on the nature of faith, the impossibility of certainty, the importance of love. Then into that mess drops an unlikely lifeline in the form of “Dear Sugar,” an advice column she’s recruited to take on. (The 2014 film Wild, also based on Strayed’s life, would actually be the closest comparison.) The Clare we first meet in the pilot is a trainwreck: reckless, volatile and quick to announce it’s not her fault Danny kicked her out of their home after she drained their teenage daughter’s college fund. The present-day narrative unfolds in linear fashion, and seems at first not unlike other recent Hulu half-hours about messy women grappling with past trauma, a la UnPrisoned or Life & Beth. Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Sarah Pidgeon, Quentin Plair, Tanzyn Crawford, Merritt Wever, Owen Painter, Michaela Watkins, Elizabeth Hinkler

Little beautiful things