{"id":544439,"date":"2026-03-18T12:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/544439\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T12:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:05:10","slug":"imperfect-women-review-lots-of-fun-if-you-lower-your-expectations-enough-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/544439\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect Women review \u2013 lots of fun \u2026 if you lower your expectations enough | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can\u2019t say Imperfect Women doesn\u2019t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots \u2013 three women dancing, drunkenly but happily, laughing but not scream-laughing, as the camera whirls round their beautifully lit selves \u2013 and the first line \u2013 an earnest voiceover about \u201ca kinship from deep in our souls\u201d \u2013 what we\u2019re in for. That is, an overwritten, far-fetched, glossy but derivative murder mystery \u2013 a descendant of Big Little Lies<\/a>, intermarried with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

Adjust your expectations accordingly and you\u2019ll have a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment. Dwell on the fact that you could well have expected better of an Apple TV production and a main cast that includes Kerry Washington<\/a>, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara and you\u2019ll have less of a good time. So don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

Enjoy instead the comforts of familiarity. We open, \u00e0 la Big Little Lies, in the middle of a police interview after one of the dancing women has been murdered. But who? Kerry Washington \u2013 playing an intergenerationally wealthy philanthropist, Eleanor \u2013 is the one being interviewed, so it\u2019s not her. It\u2019s \u2026 Kate Mara, AKA Nancy, the trophy wife of an intergenerationally wealthy non-philanthropist, Robert (Joel Kinnaman).<\/p>\n

As a rich, short-tempered man who likes a drink and has a horrible, rapacious family that immediately hires a crisis-management firm to control the press narrative, Robert is first on the list of suspects for the police \u2013 and last on the list for viewers, because we know how these things work. But then we remember The Undoing<\/a>, roll our eyes and brace for non-impact.<\/p>\n

Moss rounds out the trio by playing Mary, a stay-at-home mum who is married to Howard (Corey Stoll), an English professor. UK audiences will need to be told, as it is not obvious from their enormous home or three immaculately turned-out children, that this means they are poor. Similarly, Nancy\u2019s upbringing in Bakersfield, California, means she has made very good indeed. When a plot is based in US economics, the series really should come with a leaflet giving conversion tables.<\/p>\n

So, Nancy dead. Friends upset. Friends more upset when they learn Nancy had been keeping secrets from them and they had been keeping secrets from each other \u2013 some better than others. Eleanor\u2019s enormous crush on Robert, for example, is not quite the unknown unknown she thought it was. (Mary calls it her \u201cconnection with\u201d him, because she is not only poor but polite.)<\/p>\n

But Mary didn\u2019t know that Nancy was having an affair with someone called David. Nancy told only Eleanor. So only Eleanor knew that she went to see him after their night out together, which then became the night she died. Welcome to suspect slot No 2, David.<\/p>\n

Or is the killer in fact Davide (Theo Bongani Ndyalvane), an artist who recently painted Nancy\u2019s naked form and whose resulting painting she even more recently hung in the marital home? Peut-\u00eatre. Mais peut-\u00eatre pas.<\/p>\n

Robert takes Eleanor to the opera on his dead wife\u2019s ticket to take their minds off things: \u201cTo hell with the optics.\u201d OK. None of this is looking much like friendship, never mind kinship, but it is not the kind of drama that demands that you care about anything, never mind consistency or credible character development, so tra-la-la, her frock looks nice.<\/p>\n

Mary, meanwhile, is busy securing police reports and investigating the case against Davide. She finds it unconvincing. More suspects, please!<\/p>\n

Forth they duly come, along with more clues, more secrets, more revelations, more writing swinging from platitude to platitude (\u201cStaying available to love is worth the risk.\u201d \u201cSometimes I think you see my life more clearly than I do.\u201d \u201cNothing made her happier than being your mom,\u201d and so on).<\/p>\n

Different episodes are seen through different eyes. The first couple are from Eleanor\u2019s point of view, then we get Mary\u2019s turn in the spotlight, before it is Nancy\u2019s time to shine. It adds a layer of interest to the formula \u2013 and Moss in particular brings much to her portion \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t disguise the thin gruel beneath.<\/p>\n

There are occasional gestures towards larger, wider issues. Eleanor doubts Davide\u2019s guilt partly because he is Black and she thinks Nancy would have mentioned this \u201cto her only Black friend\u201d, while Eleanor\u2019s brother, Donovan \u2013 Leslie Odom Jr<\/a> adding disproportionate credence to the whole via a tiny part \u2013 dislikes the fact that his sister has been holding a torch for a white man all her life. The financial differences among the friends are made plain, too. But these observations are no more than that.<\/p>\n

Imperfect, then, definitely. But escapist fun enough.<\/p>\n

Imperfect Women is on Apple TV now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You can\u2019t say Imperfect Women doesn\u2019t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots \u2013 three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-544439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}