It’s fish out of water time! It’s also feelgood, low-stakes, lusciously shot drama time, so pull up a comfy chair, pour yourself a drink and enjoy, with the 75% of your attention it was designed for, the Apple TV+ dramedy Land of Women.
This is the new vehicle for Eva Longoria, still best known for her role as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives more than a decade ago (though true fans may cite her four episodes as Jake Peralta’s girlfriend in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as her finest work). Here she plays Gala, an affluent and happily married New Yorker of Spanish extraction and mother of one who is countering empty nest syndrome as her daughter begins university by opening a wine shop. Yes, a … wine shop. It was clearly the first thing that came to the writers’ minds to signify happiness, wealth, New Yorkery and go-gettery. Don’t dwell on it. They clearly didn’t.
Just as this wine shop is about to open, it is revealed that her husband is a fraudster who has got into $15m’s worth of trouble with some Bad People. He has disappeared and she too must flee, with her daughter Kate (Victoria Bazua, doing well in her screen debut) and elderly, slightly addled (charmingly! Not upsettingly!) mother Julia (Carmen Maura) for safety.
But where to go? As luck would have it Julia still owns, with her estranged sister, a house in a beautiful rural village in Spain. Gala sells her jewellery, straps the resulting $50,000 in cash under a profoundly unsuitable shift dress (don’t dwell – how many times do I have to tell you?) and off they go.
You’ll never guess what they find? Except you will and that is part of the fun. There, in the village where Julia grew up and led an increasingly orgiastic young womanhood, is a love interest for each generation of the fleeing family. There is also trouble with the estranged sister and the house (which she has sold to one of the love interests after telling him Julia is dead), characterful inhabitants who remember Julia possibly too well, secrets ready to ripen, and miles of vineyards run by what seems to be an all-female collective who are barely keeping the town economically afloat. The wine is bad. If only there were someone who knew about wine and how to sell it. Hang on!
Gala has a meet cute with her love interest by performing Meet Cute No 3a – running him off the road while distracted by an argument in a new car she can’t drive very well (there is a thesis to be written about the importance of the stick shift in modern romcom history). Amat (Santiago Cabrera), whose name is like the Spanish word for “love”, don’t know if you noticed, is at first furious with then inexplicably drawn to the lavishly beautiful and charismatic woman who did it. When it turns out that he is the person who bought the family home from Julia’s sister, he is kind enough to let them stay there with him – after taking the $50,000 they hide there, to pay for the grapes she ruined with her lack of stick shift mastery. But no matter: he did it to help the village survive, for he is the head of the collective. I guess without a man at the top, the wine would be even worse.
Kate is stroppy because she is a teenager and has had to leave her beloved girlfriend Maggie behind. Gala never liked Maggie’s uncouth, vaguely homophobic parents. Gala will soon be proved right in her instincts. Meanwhile, Kate meets the local female mechanic and finds the pain of separation dulls quite quickly.
Julia, meanwhile, is having a whale of a time, back home in a village where all the men of a certain age are delighted to see her (apart from, possibly, the priest), and Maura – an acting legend in her native Spain – is mesmerically good. Pleasingly, she is given storylines at least the equal of her daughter’s and granddaughter’s – a rare enough event to be noteworthy.
This is the televisual equivalent of comfort food. There are no true surprises but enough stuff happens to keep you solidly entertained, emotionally rewarded and clicking on to the next episode. It has warmth, vitality and gorgeous shots of the Spanish countryside. It’s not going to set the world on fire but it is going to make it a nicer place to be for the duration. Sometimes, that is more than enough.
• Land of Women is on Apple TV+ now.
