East of Eden Review: Florence Pugh Leads a Rewarding Adaptation of Steinbeck's Sweeping Epic

John Steinbeck was no stranger to telling stories on a massive scale when he wrote his 1952 novel East of Eden. He'd written plenty of shorter works but also In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath, long, character-packed novels that tell gripping stories while exploring complex themes and reflecting on the nature of America. So it says something that Steinbeck said of East of Eden, "Always I had this book waiting to be written." A multigenerational saga set against the backdrop of the enormous changes that defined the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, it's one of those novels where the ambition and desire to make a grand statement is evident on every page.

That doesn't make it the easiest work to adapt. When Elia Kazan, with Steinbeck's blessing, turned the book into a film, he opted to adapt only the last of its four parts. But it's not just the novel's length that makes filming it tricky. In the wrong hands it could become soapy or self-important. Then there's the issue of Kazan's film, a revered classic that includes one of James Dean's most memorable performances. It casts a long shadow that's sure to be difficult for any new adaptation to escape.

Of course, no one would know this better than the driving force behind this new Netflix miniseries, Zoe Kazan, Elia Kazan's granddaughter. Kazan serves as East of Eden's co-showrunner with Jeb Stuart, writes all seven episodes (co-writing one with Alexander Chee), and brings a clear vision of what a 2026 adaptation of East of Eden should be: an attempt to take on the whole of Steinbeck's novel while refashioning it into a form that comfortably fits into the contemporary TV landscape. The result is a satisfying mix of the source material, an old-fashioned network miniseries, cable television frankness in depicting sex and violence, and cinematic vistas of California's Salinas Valley at the turn of the century (with Australia subbing in for the Golden State).

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The series opens far away from the state Steinbeck called home, however. In Connecticut, Cyrus Trask (Tracy Letts), a veteran of the Civil War who's made a fortune in the decades that have followed it, raises two sons of contrasting temperaments. Adam (played as an adult by Christopher Abbott) is a gentle soul who lives to please his unpleasable father. Charles (played as an adult by Mike Faist) is prone to rebellion and drawn to the wild side of town. Despite their differences, the two share a tight bond, one that's tested by the unexpected arrival of Cathy (Florence Pugh), who turns up on their doorstep after suffering a beating that left her near death. Cathy claims not to remember anything about her past, but, as subsequent events will repeatedly reveal, Cathy's relationship to the truth is questionable at best.

8.4

East of Eden

at Netflix

Like

• The complex performances and ambitious scope

Dislike

• The early episodes require patience

Pugh is thoroughly convincing as one of the great villains of American literature in part because she understands that Cathy doesn't see herself as a villain. A woman with the ability to bewitch seemingly everyone she encounters, her personality takes the form it needs to take for Cathy to thrive in whatever situation she finds herself in. And when that situation becomes too confining, she's willing to take desperate measures to escape. 

Cathy is seductive and sociopathic, but Kazan's writing and Pugh's performance combine to make her understandable, if never sympathetic, by depicting what she's reacting against: the expectations placed on girls to become wives, the constraints of marriage, the limited (and sometimes unsavory) professional options available to women, sexual double standards, the constant sexual threats faced by unattached women. She commits awful acts, but Kazan and Pugh never present her as a monster, and her humanity makes the character that much more memorable.

Pugh is the most striking element of East of Eden and never better than in the series' fifth episode, which focuses on Cathy's relationship with Faye (Martha Plimpton, a standout), the madam of a high-class brothel who comes to regard Cathy as a daughter. Hers is hardly the only memorable performance, however. Abbott and Faist establish Adam and Charles' complicated relationship in the series' first episode (set largely prior to Cathy's arrival), and its echoes of Cain and Abel continue into the next generation in Adam's twin sons: the virtuous Aron (Joe Anders) and his restless brother, Caleb (Joseph Zada).

Directed by Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (Davis helms the first four episodes, Clermont-Tonnerre the final three), the show is stately and handsome and, particularly in its early episodes, weighty in ways that make it less than ideal for Netflix's binge-watch model. The series fills each episode, labeled as chapters, with incident and angst that stay true to both the narrative and tone of Steinbeck's book. It's a journey best taken one step at a time, but one that grows more rewarding as it goes along.

That's at least partly due to the addition of supporting characters like Samuel Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds), an Irishman who helps Adam settle into California, and especially Lee (Hoon Lee), a Chinese American employee who becomes a mentor to Adam's sons and a philosophical foil to the moroseness and fatalism that Adam takes on after an unexpected betrayal. Their arrival offers a much-needed outsider's perspective to all the family turmoil.

As for escaping the landmark 1955 film, this version doesn't even start to overlap with the movie's narrative until the sixth of its seventh episodes, by which point it's established an identity all its own. That takes some of the weight off Zada, who's quite good in the thankless task of interpreting a character made famous by Dean but never becomes the series' main focus, and allows East of Eden to suggest the full sweep of Steinbeck's epic. East of Eden never quite feels like a magnum opus on the same level as its source material, but it's a fine, full adaptation that allows an excellent cast to wrestle with its themes against a landscape as big as the country that inspired it.

Premieres: Thursday, Oct. 1 on Netflix
Who's in it: Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee
Who's behind it: Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart
For fans of: Thoughtful literary adaptations, family drama, and rich performances
How many episodes we watched: 7 of 7