Summary

Apples Never Fall on Peacock stars Annette Bening, offering a twisty mystery that diverges from the novel with unique character relationships.
Changes in the show include Brooke’s affair, Stan’s implication in Joy’s disappearance, and a different ending that still honors the source material.
Creator Melanie Marnich’s adaptation keeps the spirit of Liane Moriarty’s novel alive while adding dramatic twists to engage viewers.

Based on the Liane Moriarty novel of the same name, Apples Never Fall is a mystery drama series that premiered on Peacock on March 14, 2024. The series stars Annette Bening as Joy Delaney, a wife and mother of four children who suddenly disappears, leaving it up to her family members to discover her whereabouts. Although the series has garnered mild reviews, most critics agree that the performances by Bening and the supporting cast members are worth watching.

Of course, when a showrunner adapts a popular novel, inevitable changes made from the page to the screen are expected. As for Apples Never Fall creator Melanie Marnich, the show follows the basic structure of the source novel but makes a few crucial changes to the story, characters, and conclusion. For those who’ve read the novel and are interested in knowing how the two fictional works differ, it’s time to spotlight the biggest changes made in Peacock’s Apples Never Fall.

What Is Apples Never Fall About?

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To understand how the two works differ, it’s important to understand the similarities of the basic plot. Apples Never Fall concerns the Delaney family, led by Joy (Bening) and Stan (Sam Neill). Joy and Stan have four children, including Amy (Alison Brie), Troy (Jake Lacy), Logan (Connor Merrigan Turner), and Brooke (Essie Randles). The Delaney family enjoy an idyllic upper-class life and spend most of their time obsessed with playing tennis.

The mysterious plot kicks off when a strange young woman named Savannah (Georgia Flood) shows the Delaneys’ doorstep. Soon after, Joy suddenly vanishes, prompting her family to wonder if the matriarch’s sudden disappearance is related to Savannha’s arrival. At this point, the show remains faithful to Moriarty’s novel. One minor difference relates to the character descriptions in the novel, which state that the Delaneys are a family of tall and dark tennis giants. In the Peacock Original series, the Delaney’s are average size with paler complexions. Beyond the cosmetic differences, the biggest changes Marnich made to Moriarty’s novel involve character relationships.

Character Relationships

In the novel, Brooke is separated from her husband, Grant, whereas in the show, Brooke is engaged to marry a woman named Gina Solis (Paula Andrea Placido). Although it seems like a minor change, Brooke’s entire marriage is omitted from the story and Grant is nowhere to be found in the show. Elsewhere, Troy is swept up in a torrid sexual affair with the wife of his boss, a storyline that does not exist in the novel and that was completely fabricated to increase the dramatic stakes of his character.

While sexual affairs become a major theme in the show, another difference involving Joy’s past dalliance can be spotted. The novel explains that Joy engaged in a brief fling with a man that ended with a drunken kiss during a meaningless one-night stand. In the show, this affair is given more dramatic heft as it incites a crucial argument between Joy and Stan that never takes place in the novel. However, the biggest relationship difference between the book and the series is between Brooke and Savannah.

Savannah and Brooke’s Relationship

The biggest dramatic license taken by Marnich in the new streaming TV show is the relationship between Brooke and Savannah. In the show, Brooke believes that her fiancée Gina is cheating on her. As payback, Brooke starts an affair with Savannah, with both storylines drastically veering from the plot featured in the novel. When asked about why these changes were necessary to tell the story, Marnich told Variety:

“The Savannah-Brooke thing is really Brooke’s need to blow up her life. She can’t quite manage this happiness. She can’t quite manage this stable next phase of her career, and I think none of the kids are really great at being loved.”

For Marnich, it was important to depict Savannah’s ability to see Brooke’s true feelings and act on them, adding:

“One of Savannah’s gifts is an almost X-ray vision in her ability to see what somebody’s weaknesses are. She avails herself to Brooke and Brooke’s particular weakness to undermine the fabric of the family, and definitely to blow up Brooke’s life.”

Savannah and Her Mother
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In the novel, the relationship between Savannah and her mother is explored at great length, but less so in the TV show. Savannah also has an eating disorder in the novel that has been glanced over in the TV series. When asked about these edits, Marnich explained that there are always difficult decisions to make when adapting a novel relative to pacing and time. According to Marnich:

“In terms of how much to reveal in Savannah’s backstory regarding her mom, there were just some really brutal choices that had to be made in terms of serving the forward momentum of the show. What served the forward momentum of the show was the story of the Delaneys.”

Instead of focusing on Savannah’s mother and eating disorder like the book, the 2024 crime thriller show concentrates on her criminal past, using multiple aliases across several states, potentially blackmailing Troy for $10,000 for his sexual affair, and stalking a tennis star named Harry Haddad (Giles Matthey) after Harry and his father left Savannah and her mother.

Logan’s Marina Job and The Boat
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Another key difference between the novel and the show relates to Logan’s job and the implication of Stan as a potential murderer. While none of this takes place in the novel, the show introduces a red herring at Logan’s day job as a marina dockworker. In the novel, police find security camera footage of what appears to be Stan loading something large into his car, with readers assuming it could be Joy’s dead body.

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In the show, Stan is depicted using one of the boats at the marina where Logan works to load a large item that viewers also presume might be Joy’s corpse. The implication of Stan’s guilt is made stronger when the Delaney family takes a ride on the same boat the day before Joy vanishes. While this story alteration did not come up in Marnich’s Variety interview, it’s another glaring difference made between the source material and the mystery series.

What Happens at the End of Apples Never Fall?
Peacock

While the big twist revelation at the end of Apples Never Fall remains the same in the book and series, several differences can also be spotted. In both stories, it turns out that Joy was never missing. Instead, Joy deliberately went off with Savannah to handle personal business. When she returns, the Delaneys undergo years of therapy and become a stronger family as a result.

In the book, it is revealed that Joy and Savannah traveled to an off-grid health center together. Afterward, the two separate and Joy returns home, where her family is shocked to learn that she has not been killed. The mystery TV show reveals that Joy and Savannah traveled to Joy’s hidden refuge in the Georgia mountains. When Joy hears of a storm hitting her hometown, she pleads to return home to be with her family. Savannah agrees but crashes the car on their way out of the mountains.

As Savannah flees from the scene, she begs for Joy’s forgiveness. In the end, Joy returns home safely on her own. The book ends with Savannah, but the show ends with a tender moment between the Delaney family, something that was important for Marnich, she told Variety:

“In terms of how much to reveal in Savannah’s backstory regarding her mom, there were just some really brutal choices that had to be made in terms of serving the forward momentum of the show. What served the forward momentum of the show was the story of the Delaneys…
It just felt like energy-wise, story-wise, and in terms of the immediacy of the storytelling and the emotional impact, it had to all roll out that night and early the next morning. In the versions that went later, it felt that the emotional impact had already been spent. The story was already done.”

Although significant dramatic changes were made from the page to the screen, the spirit of Moriarty’s novel is honored in the Peacock TV adaptation of Apples Never Fall.