Little Disasters tells a slow, tense story about how lives and friendships begin to crumble. Diane Kruger stars in it, making the story feel real and close.
Here is everything you need to know before you watch with no spoilers.
What the Little Disasters series is
As you already know, the show follows Jess Carrisford (Diane Kruger). She is a picture-perfect stay-at-home mom whose life begins to crack after her newborn daughter arrives at the hospital with a serious head injury.
The fundamental moral dilemma driving the plot is that Liz (Jo Joyner), an A&E doctor and one of Jess’s best friends, treats the child. She faces the hard decision of whether to report the injury to social services. This triggers investigations, gossip, friendships forced into the glare, and a community that is suddenly suspicious and defensive.
Structurally, the show is compact with six episodes. All those oscillate between clinical hospital sequences, intimate domestic scenes, and charged social interactions among mothers.
Diane Kruger acts as Jess
Diane Kruger’s casting is a deliberate tonal choice. You know her range: she can move from fierce to fragile without losing center. Here she plays Jess, who initially looks like the “perfect mom” by all outward measures. What makes Kruger’s performance matter is her ability to embody the exhaustion under the gloss.
Her real-world motherhood also informs the performance. Being a parent gave her access to the sensory reality of caring for infants, the sleep deprivation, the heightened anxiety, all of which the camera records in detail.
Kruger told People the role was physically and emotionally taxing. She experienced heart palpitations while performing and called it “exhausting,” a signal that the show asks its lead to go to dark psychological places.
The Little Disasters supporting cast
A thriller about community only works if the cast chemistry feels credible. The main supporting cast of this mini-series includes the following:
- Jo Joyner (Dr. Liz Burgess): She acts as the A&E doctor whose decision to report Jess’s infant’s injury kickstarts the series’ central conflict. Liz is the character through whom institutional pressure is dramatized.
- Shelley Conn (Charlotte Hinman): She plays one of the mothers in the close-knit group whose reactions help reveal the social textures of the circle. She is married to a lawyer in the story.
- Emily Taaffe (Mel Quinn): She portrays another mother whose private life and marriage become windows into the group’s broader dynamics. Mel’s role shows how domestic pressures outside the central incident compound the stress that friendship and suspicion create.
- JJ Feild (Ed Carrisford): He acts as Jess’s husband and the primary partner figure whose behavior and choices influence public perception of Jess. He switches often between a protective partner and someone whose decisions complicate the family’s position under scrutiny.
- Ben Bailey Smith (Nick Davis): He plays Liz’s husband and provides a view into how the medical-professional household responds to both public scrutiny and private fear.
- Stephen Campbell Moore (Rob Baird): He acts as Mel’s husband and is one of the adult figures whose responses and backstory add texture to the group’s social fabric.
- Patrick Baladi (Andrew Hinman): He plays Charlotte’s husband, a lawyer whose professional background informs how the group handles legal trouble.
- Chizzy Akudolu (Lucy Harding): She appears as a supporting figure connected to the hospital and investigations, and often acts as a practical, human presence within scenes that could otherwise feel abstract.
- Robert Gilbert (DC Rustin): He plays Detective Constable Rustin, one of the law-enforcement figures who becomes involved as suspicion deepens.
- Jax James (Frankie): Frankie is a child character in the families at the series’ center. He humanizes and raises urgent stakes over parental decisions that are put into question.
- Barney Wheeler (Connor): He appears as one of the younger child characters within the friend group’s households. This is a presence that helps dramatize normal family life and how it can disrupt.
- Jago Bilderbeck (Kit): Kit is another supporting adult whose interactions with the main parents help map social positions and loyalties within the neighborhood.
- Lucy Freegard (Mollie): Mollie is a peripheral but telling presence in the community network whose reactions and side conversations amplify the group’s unraveling. When Mollie appears, small-town or neighborhood dynamics escalate rather than resolve.
- Oscar Kerrigan (George): He plays one of the children in the series’ domestic web and is part of the visual shorthand that keeps family stakes tangible.
- Dominic Mafham (Neil): He appears as one of the adult professionals or acquaintances who intersect with the families. He helps broaden the institutional and community perspective.
The source material and adaptation: what changed and what survived
Little Disasters is from Sarah Vaughan’s 2020 novel. The book already had readers turning pages because of its ethical ambiguity and close social observation. The show stays true to the novel’s central premise, the disastrous fallout after a newborn’s injury.
Adaptations always ask what to compress and what to expand. The series expands hospital and legal procedural threads about how doctors and social services interact, and gives more screen time to the A&E nurse/doctor perspective. This would make the institutional questions more visible than in the book.
So, if you loved the book’s moral ambiguity, you’ll find it present on screen; if you wanted more procedural clarity, the show gives you extra framing to follow.
Little Disasters production, director and writers
The series was created for television by Ruth Fowler and adapted with Amanda Duke. Director Eva Sigurðardóttir helms the episodes, and production came from Roughcut Television in association with Fremantle.
Executive producers include Sarah Vaughan (the novelist), Ash Atalla, Alex Smith, and Marianna Abbotts. The series is a UK production, but it has international distribution on Paramount+.
Release dates, territories, and how to watch
Little Disasters premiered earlier in the UK and Ireland on May 22, 2025. But for a wide international audience, including the U.S., Canada, parts of Europe, Italy, and Latin America, Paramount+ will release the full six-episode season on December 11, 2025.
The platform confirmed the U.S./international rollout and has released full trailers to support a December watch window. All episodes will drop simultaneously in the window, so you can watch the entire show at once.
Paramount+, the edition that includes Showtime, where applicable in your country, will carry this TV show. Their platform is available via their web app. You can also download apps on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV/Chromecast, or game consoles like PlayStation/Xbox.
Make sure your Paramount+ app is updated before the 11th and sign in to your account.