Luke Bracey says Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie deliberately presents Charles “Pa” Ingalls as a well-intentioned but fallible man, rather than the near-perfect father figure seen through Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood perspective. The approach is significant because it aims to preserve the warmth of the books while giving the central character more human complexity and accountability for his mistakes.

Bracey, who had little prior familiarity with the books or earlier television series, plays Charles as he moves Caroline and their daughters from Wisconsin to Kansas in search of cheap land and a new start. The first season ends with the family leaving again after a promised government land arrangement involving the Osage people fails and a fire destroys their crops; Bracey describes Charles as optimistic and good-hearted, but prone to errors.