Rating: ★★★ stars
Verdict: "Imperfect Women" is glossy, well-acted and occasionally compelling, but it rarely surprises or breaks free of its familiar genre tropes. The performances keep it watchable, yet the story often drifts, leaving the central mystery less gripping than it should be
Release schedule: First two episodes available to stream now. Episodes 3-8 drop weekly on Wednesdays.
Where to watch: Apple TV
There's no genre of TV show I love more than the wine mom drama. You know, the "Big Little Lies" type: rich women, expensive lighting, a murder that exposes decades of secrets, and at least one emotionally repressed woman (often played by Nicole Kidman) staring into the middle distance while holding a glass of wine she absolutely deserves. "Imperfect Women" is that show. It’s glossy, it’s stacked with stars and it’s built around a friendship-that-might-actually-be-toxic dynamic.
Which is why it’s so baffling that, after watching the two-episode premiere, I found myself … a little bored.
That’s not to say "Imperfect Women" is bad. It’s perfectly watchable and occasionally compelling. But it also feels like a show assembled from the most familiar pieces of the prestige mystery-industrial complex. This should be my wine-mom drama Super Bowl. Instead, it’s more like a polite dinner party where everyone looks incredible, but they're telling the same stories you've heard a million times before.
'Imperfect Woman' wants to be 'Big Little Lies,' but falls short
"Imperfect Women" follows three longtime friends — Eleanor (Kerry Washington), Mary (Elisabeth Moss), and Nancy (Kate Mara) — whose carefully curated lives begin to crack after Nancy turns up dead. From there, the show toggles between the present timeline and flashbacks that reveal secrets and resentments simmering for decades.
This should be my wine-mom drama Super Bowl. Instead, it’s more like a polite dinner party where everyone looks incredible, but they're telling the same stories you've heard a million times before.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it's a near-clone of "Big Little Lies" from the jump. You’ve got the sun-drenched wealth, simmering tension and the sense that these women are friends more out of obligation than affection. There are galas, police interrogations, whispered confrontations — all the genre staples are here.
The problem is that "Imperfect Women" rarely pushes beyond those expectations in the first two episodes. The central mystery — who killed Nancy and why — is intriguing enough to keep you watching, but it lacks urgency early on. Instead of tightening the screws, the show often feels like it's content to lean on its luxurious aesthetic rather than build momentum.
The wealth-versus-outsider dynamic, which could give the show real bite, often feels like a well-worn trope rather than a sharp point of view. "Imperfect Women" gestures at themes of class and privilege, but so far, it hasn’t said anything particularly new — and in a genre this crowded, that feels tired.
Verdict: 'Imperfect Women' is glossy and 'fine!'
If "Imperfect Women" works at all, it’s because of the starry cast. Kerry Washington’s Eleanor anchors the early episodes with a tightly controlled performance that hints at deeper cracks beneath the surface. Elisabeth Moss, meanwhile, is operating squarely in her wheelhouse, playing a woman whose seemingly perfect life is quietly imploding.
Kate Mara has the trickiest role, given that Nancy’s death kicks off the story, but the glimpses we get suggest a more layered character than the show initially lets on. And as we shift between perspectives, there’s at least the promise of deeper character exploration in later episodes.
But that same structure also contributes to the show’s biggest issue. Every time the story resets to a new point of view, the narrative loses momentum. Combined with the too-familiar plot, it leaves the series in an awkward middle ground — not bad enough to quit, but not gripping enough to fully binge. Episode 2 left on a reveal that was not shocking or juicy enough to leave me dying to see the next installment.
The real issue is that we’ve seen this all before, in better versions and worse ones, and "Imperfect Women" lands squarely in the middle. For a series about messy, complicated women, it plays things surprisingly safe. And while I’ll probably keep watching — because this is very much my thing — I can’t help wishing it were a little sharper, somewhat edgier and a lot less content to be just fine.
