Eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives at her new husband’s grand canal-side house in 1686 Amsterdam clutching a cabinet-sized replica of the building. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the country bride who discovers that sugar-merchant Johannes Brandt (Alex Hassell) prefers the company of his male lover to hers, while his puritanical sister Marin Brandt (Romola Garai) rules the domestic sphere with Bible in one hand and household keys in the other. A mysterious miniaturist begins sending Nella perfectly scaled furnishings for her dollhouse that predict, with unnerving accuracy, the tragedies about to unfold within the real walls: a hidden pregnancy, a cache of illegal sugar, a court summons for sodomy.
The two-part BBC adaptation, written by John Brownlow from Jessie Burton’s bestseller, keeps the novel’s confectionary colour palette but strips away most of the supernatural intrigue. Director Guillem Morales shoots Leiden’s canals and candle-lit interiors like a Dutch Golden Age painting suddenly animated, all ochre shadows and cracked varnish. Composer Dan Jones underscores the tension with single harpsichord notes that echo through marble corridors. When the burgomasters drag Johannes to the scaffold, the camera lingers on Nella’s face as she realises the miniature woman she has been dressing is herself, already trapped inside the dollhouse she once thought was a gift.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 2 Episodes / 2017
Created by: John Brownlow
Showrunner(s): George Faber, John Brownlow, Kate Sinclair
Writer(s): John Brownlow
Producer(s): D. Gethin Scourfield, Erin Delaney
Cinematography: Gavin Finney
Music: Dan Jones
Main Cast
Anya Taylor-Joy as Petronella Brandt
Romola Garai as Marin Brandt
Alex Hassell as Johannes Brandt
Hayley Squires as Cornelia
Paapa Essiedu as Otto
Emily Berrington as The Miniaturist
Geoffrey Streatfeild as Frans Meermans
Aislín McGuckin as Agnes Meermans
Ziggy Heath as Jack Philips
Christopher Godwin as Pastor Pellicorne
Ian Hogg as Pieter Slabbaert
Caolan Byrne as Arnoud
