Crosby Fitzgerald (left), Alice Halsey, Luke Bracey and Skywalker Hughes
in Little House on the Prairie season 1.
Photo by Eric Zachanowich/Netflix
Netflix picked up a second season of its Little House on the Prairie remake before the first one premiered. If that hadn’t happened beforehand, the numbers for its first season probably would have justified a renewal anyway.
The show has been on Netflix’s worldwide series charts for the past five weeks. In the U.S., Little House premiered in second place overall and moved up to first place in the latest charts. (The 1970s-80s show still does well too — it had 20 billion-plus minutes of watch time on Peacock over 2024 and 2025.)
For all the strident libertarian stuff in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books (thanks in large part to her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane), and the anti-Native stuff, and the manifest destiny stuff, the new Little House at least attempts to acknowledge that Ingalls family’s story and that of the people around them was more nuanced than the novels present. Pa (Luke Bracey), for one, is either overly trusting or just kind of a dummy in a number of situations, and the family comes to realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods as regards the land they’re homesteading. (The TV Is Good podcast has a very good read on the series — with some bonus Deadwood talk.)
Beyond that, the performances are good — Alice Halsey and Skywalker Hughes, who play Laura and Mary, are very strong young actors — and it’s very beautifully shot, with Manitoba standing in for Kansas. It’s not hard to see why Netflix was quick to renew it (season 2 is filming now, which should mean there won’t be an overly long break between seasons), even before the numbers came in.
Onto the weekly charts …