'A Nearly Normal Family' Is Actually Based On *This* Book
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The world's obsession with true crime has once again paved the way for a popular, new Netflix series to take over the streamer: A Nearly Normal Family, which is based on Swedish author M.T. Edvardsson’s bestselling book of the same name. The miniseries tells the story of how a seemingly "perfect" family’s world comes crashing down when their 19-year-old daughter, Stella Sandell, is accused of murdering her lover and arrested.
The six-part limited series stars newcomer Alexandra Karlsson Tyrefors as Stella, and Lo Kauppi and Björn Bengtsson as her parents, Ulrika and Adam Sandell.
The "Nordic Noir" thriller premiered on the streamer on November 24, and has quickly gained popularity. In fact, the show is currently one of Netflix's Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S. And as with other crime-centric movies and TV series, people are naturally curious to know if A Nearly Normal Family has any real-life connections or inspirations.
So, is this new miniseries based on a true story? Women's Health has all the answers ahead.
A Nearly Normal Family: A Novel
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Is A Nearly Normal Family based on a true story?
Nope. But the series, directed by Per Hanefjord and written by Anna Platt and Hans Jörnlind, is based on Edvardsson’s novel. The author previously told Celadon Books that A Nearly Normal Family’s premise came to him one night while thinking about what it’d be like to raise his young daughters when they became teenagers. That said, this book is undoubtedly a work of fiction.
“I think every parent can relate to that fear of not knowing when your child is coming home,” he said. “I imagined my future teen daughter coming home way past midnight and me having the feeling that something is wrong. I imagined myself going downstairs into the laundry room to find that my daughter had tried to wash blood off of her clothes. I asked myself what I would do. If my daughter was brought in by the police the next morning, accused of murdering a man, what would I say? How would I react? How far would I go in stretching the truth to protect my daughter?”
Are any of the characters based on real people?
It’s unclear whether the show's characters are modeled after specific individuals in real life, mostly because Edvardsson has not really spoken to this point. However, the author did confirm he couldn’t have written from the perspective of teenage girls without his 15 years of experience as a high school teacher.
“I know how 18-year-old girls interact—I know their world, and I also know that parents and teenagers do not always share everything with each other,” he told Celadon. “In some extreme cases, it seems they really don't know each other very well. That is one thing I wanted to take a closer look at in this novel.”
Does the miniseries follow the book’s plot?
The series, like the book, follows the same story as the miniseries: Stella, a seemingly ordinary teenager from the Sandell family finds herself accused of murdering the man she’s been seeing, Christoffer. While Stella’s parents, Ulrika, a lawyer, and Adam, a priest, try to defend her against the murder accusation, they learn that they don’t really know their daughter—or each other—as well as they thought.
As with the book, Netflix’s A Nearly Normal Family is similarly told from the three perspectives of the Sandell family members. However, instead of being divided into three distinct sections, the series jumps back and forth between each of their points of view.
What happens at the end of A Nearly Normal Family?
**Warning! Spoilers ahead!**
The first five episodes of the series unpack Stella’s past as well as the family’s own discoveries and secrets. The final episode, though, focuses on Stella’s trial. The big surprise comes from a conversation between Ulrika and Stella’s best friend, Amina, that occurs earlier in the show. But the audience doesn't know what, exactly, they talked about until the end of the series.
When Amina takes the stand, she reveals that she was drugged, kidnapped, and raped by Stella’s boyfriend on the night of his murder, though she claims she’s not the killer since she fled the scene and heard about his death the next morning, per Digital Spy. Stella’s mom, who is a lawyer, apparently told Amina to hold off on sharing this information with the police so prosecutors wouldn’t charge both her and Stella with murder. Her hope was that another possible suspect could be introduced and help Stella go free. And thanks to these flashbacks, viewers learn what actually happened to Stella’s boyfriend on the night he was killed.
Here's what went down: After realizing that Chris had assaulted Amina, Stella went to his apartment to save her friend. The series’ last flashback reveals that Stella did, in fact, stab Chris to death after he chased her and Amina with a knife outside, fell, and dropped it. Amina then helped Stella hide the weapon, and so only those two know the truth of Chris’s murder.
You can catch A Nearly Normal Family streaming now on Netflix.
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