Imperfect Women, Apple TV’s newest mystery, is leaving critics bored with a thriller format that has been overdone — despite solid performances.
Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara star in the eight-episode show as three longtime friends who are forced to examine the cracks in their relationships after a shocking murder. The cast includes actors Leslie Odom Jr., Joel Kinnaman, Rome Flynn and Corey Stoll.
Based on Araminta Hall’s novel of the same name and adapted by Annie Weisman, the first two episodes of the limited series were released on the streaming platform Wednesday and will be followed by new episodes every Wednesday through April 29.
The miniseries appears to take a page right out of HBO’s Big Little Lies playbook in what TV Line called a “wine mom mystery” — a binge-worthy drama that is entertaining and easy to follow. But while it might be easy to watch, some critics are frustrated with the popular premise of rich women who find themselves entangled in either doing or solving a crime — used in shows like BLL, Scarpetta, His and Hers,The Undoing, All Her Fault, and now, Imperfect Women.
Despite the familiar beats of the storyline, some viewers were impressed with how the three main actors portrayed friendship. Screen Rant’s Matthew Rudoy wrote: “While it may not be the next Big Little Lies, Apple TV's Imperfect Women is an addictive thriller with plenty to offer outside its ultimately predictable mystery.”’
Leila Latif wrote for The AV Club, “It almost goes without saying that both Washington and Moss deliver powerful, nuanced performances. Washington captures Eleanor’s unravelling with sharp precision, while Moss brings a quiet intensity to Mary’s slow emotional reckoning. But the series’ true revelation is Mara, who gives Nancy a magnetic presence that anchors the entire narrative.”
Others were under the impression that the star-studded cast was wasted on an uninventive plot.
The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan described the series as “an overwritten, far-fetched, glossy but derivative murder mystery – a descendant of Big Little Lies, intermarried with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last 10 years.”
Daniel Fienberg, writing for The Hollywood Reporter called the show “maddeningly generic,” saying in his review: “Imperfect Women isn’t the worst entry in television’s most exhausted genre, but it arrives so late in the genre’s lifespan that its generic blandness feels more offensive than jagged ineptitude.”
“These women are acting their faces off,” Roger Ebert’s Sherin Nicole wrote in her review before later concluding: “Even so, the series left me slightly buzzed, mostly sober. There is nothing wrong with Imperfect Women but that is neither praise nor criticism. It’s just fine.”
