Violet Walsh | Contributing Illustrator

“It’s fully giving kidnap-homicide,” Morgan (Taylor Ortega) squeals as she and her brother, Nicky (Dan Levy) are marched at gunpoint into an unmarked van at their grandmother’s funeral. 

“It’s giving? Those are your last words?” retorts Nicky in Levy’s “Big Mistakes,” a wonderfully unexpected and charming new crime comedy series that just dropped on Netflix. 

Levy, a four-time Emmy Award winner for the sitcom “Schitt’s Creek,” has created his second narrative TV show with “Big Mistakes,” for which he is credited as the star, co-writer, and showrunner. 

The new series shines through its focus on compelling family squabbles and when it features the excellent Laurie Metcalf as Linda, Morgan and Nicky’s mother. But, unfortunately, it falls flat when it shifts to what should be its beating heart: the generic and unengaging crime story.

As “Big Mistakes” begins, Nicky, a nervous pastor, and Morgan, a boisterous schoolteacher, are waiting in a hospital for their grandmother Nonna (Judith Roberts) to die. Well, specifically, they are being shouted at by Linda, their furiously driven mother, for failing as grandchildren and for not giving their Nonna a proper gift as they wait for her to die. 

The brother and sister decide to buy a sentimental necklace for Nonna, but when storeowner Yusuf (Boran Kuzum) refuses to sell it to them, Morgan steals the necklace instead. It turns out that that necklace was a part of a criminal conspiracy! Their little heist prompts a rollercoaster crime storyline where the two siblings get caught up in a Turkish plot involving apartment leasing, pointed guns, and a cattle auction.

Yet the most interesting part of “Big Mistakes” is not its pseudo-mafia plot, but its B-storyline of hilarious and well-written family drama. 

Morgan and Nicky both feel like disappointments to their mom, especially compared to their seemingly perfect and always-courteous sister Natalie (Abby Quinn). 

Both Morgan and Nicky each struggle with their own romantic relationships, too. Nicky has a secret boyfriend, Tareq (Jacob Gutierrez), whom he cares deeply about but cannot go public with for fear of retribution from the potentially homophobic congregation he leads. Morgan is about to get engaged to her boyfriend, Max (Jack Innanen), but his earnestness and therapy speak are making her doubt their relationship.

But Metcalf as Linda masterfully anchors the family. Her Linda is bitter and sarcastic with many uproarious one-liners (“It’s too early for sarcasm, Morgan, it’s unattractive before noon!”) but she has a tender and vulnerable layer, too. Each scene with Linda, whether she is shouting about her campaign to become the town’s mayor or suggesting that her family kicks one of Nonna’s enemies out of Nonna’s wake is fascinating even as her deep empathy for her children shines through.

Ortega as Morgan is similarly compelling, excellently performing both her tear-stained absurd lies in support of the criminal conspiracy and her vulnerable anger at Nicky for being too distant, shouting “I wish for once that you could take me seriously and show up for me!”

Her boyfriend, Max, is also well written, offering a complex blend of innocent devotion to Morgan and coy suaveness in his attempts to win over her acquiescence to his proposal. Innanen’s adorably sweet performance steals scenes.

But Nicky and Tareq are far less interesting. 

Levy’s written an unfortunately generic character for himself. Nicky is prone to stress and dedicated to his church and boyfriend, but that is about it. In most scenes, he is just worried and unconfident which falls flat when compared to the far more nuanced and varied characters that orbit him. 

The same is true of the crime in “Big Mistakes.”

Across the first few episodes especially, “Big Mistakes’” criminal activity amounts to vague shouting, unmarked vans, and a big mansion. The stereotypical mafia-like criminals predictably hook Morgan and Nicky into performing more “favors” on their behalf, which our starring siblings stumble through. 

There is not anything wrong with the criminal vignettes each episode, which play out with some cute jokes and foreseeable twists, but they distract from the far more dynamic interactions Morgan and Nicky share with each other and with their family. Even Linda’s mayoral debates are more unexpected and exciting than this show’s literal criminal conspiracy.

Those crime scenes are often backed by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Peaches’ electronic score, full of booming bass lines, drums, and guitars. The score is intermittently thrilling, but tends to draw too much attention to itself and can feel mismatched from the show’s tone.

The title design is well made, with black and white iconography changing each episode alongside flashing newspaper-ransom-note-like letters spelling out the show’s name. 

“Big Mistakes” is certainly not as sweet as “Schitt’s Creek,” or as unpredictable and interesting in its crime as the more dramatic “Slow Horses,” but it offers a little bit of both in a well-dressed, if not spectacular, package. 

Ortega and Metcalf especially deliver strong performances with well-written material and fun one-liners. Nothing in the show is particularly bad or uninteresting; “Big Mistakes” at its worst is just predictable, repetitive crime throughout its half-hour runtime. 

But at its best, “Big Mistakes” offers a surprisingly complex and fully engaging family story rife with all the humor, friction, and connections of real-world homes.

All eight episodes of “Big Mistakes”’ are now streaming on Netflix.