An eight-part miniseries from Kids Are All Right and Olive Kitteridge director Lisa Cholodenko and written by Jon Robin Baitz, The Slap is a U.S. remake of a three-year-old Australian miniseries. The original was based on Christos Tsiolkas 2010 novel, noted for “its raw style, liberal use of profanity and racial epithets, and laserlike focus on the travails of suburban life.” It was called “a down-and-dirty version of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children. At a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb, a man loses his temper and slaps the child of the host’s friends. This incident unleashes a slew of divisive opinions, pitting friends and families against each other as the child’s parents take the man to court. Told from eight different viewpoints, the novel also deftly fills in disparate backstories encompassing young and old, single and married, gay and straight, as well as depicting how multiculturalism is increasingly impacting the traditional Aussie ethos. For good measure, the author also throws in male vanity, infidelity and homophobia.”