Time to dust off the gingham: Netflix is about to release a new adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved frontier stories. The series will revisit Little House on the Prairie (1935), the best-known of her books.

For nearly a century, Wilder’s fictionalised accounts of her experiences on the American frontier in the 1870s and 1880s have been a staple of American culture. Her iconic children’s books – eight volumes originally published from 1932 to 1943 – quickly found an eager global audience. Together, they’ve sold over 73 million copies and indelibly shaped a popular image of a certain place and time in American life.

American filmmaker Michael Landon’s equally beloved television adaptation of the books hasn’t left syndication since its first run from 1974 to 1983. During the pandemic, it experienced a new resurgence that has yet to abate: in 2024 alone, it racked up 13.3 billion streaming minutes.

But how will a new generation of viewers respond to the Ingalls family and their experiences of life in an America that was still taking shape?

Besides the resurgent streaming figures, there are signs that this might be a fertile moment to reimagine life on the prairie. Whether in the 1930s or the 1970s, Little House on the Prairie has always thrived in times of depression and turmoil. Indeed, with uncanny timing, Landon’s adaptation premiered in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Petrochemical trauma apparently stimulates a longing for the age of the horse.

In moments of global suffering, Wilder’s prairie seems to offer a vision of simplicity that serves as an antidote to the turbulence of modern life – it even provided some with a blueprint for COVID lockdown life. Wilder’s........

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