Kathryn Hahn Shines as Cheryl Strayed in ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’: TV Review
Alison Herman Kathryn Hahn has a type. Since starring in Joey Soloway’s “Afternoon Delight” in 2013, the actor has spent a decade delivering nuanced portrayals of messy, horny, hilarious women who bluster their way through middle age. It is a miracle of modern television that Hahn’s hyper-specific specialty has supported three separate series: “I Love Dick,”also helmed by Soloway; “Mrs. Fletcher”;and now, “Tiny Beautiful Things.” Created by Liz Tigelaar of “Little Fires Everywhere,”the Hulu half-hour casts Hahn as a fictional version of Cheryl Strayed, the memoirist and advice columnist who rose to fame by blending both forms into one. The show is adapted from the 2012 book of the same name, a collection of essays Strayed first published under the moniker Dear Sugar. Strayed met her readers’ deeply personal disclosures with some of her own, sharing her experience with addiction, grief and abuse in long missives more meandering and literary than straightforward tips. As a series, “Tiny Beautiful Things” aggregates and expands those experiences, then attributes them to Hahn’s Strayed surrogate, Clare Pierce.