Imperfect Woman Review – A Lot of Fun… If You Lower Your Expectations Enough | television

YYou can’t say that the “imperfect woman” doesn’t warn you. It’s clear from the first shots – three women dancing, drunk but happily, laughing but not screaming, as the camera pans around their beautifully lit selves – and the first line – an earnest voiceover about “a kinship from the depths of our souls” – what we’re in for. This is a well-written, far-fetched, brilliant yet derivative murder mystery – a descendant of Big Little Lies, married with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last ten years.

Adjust your expectations accordingly and you’ll get a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment. Focus on the fact that you could have expected better from the Apple TV production and a main cast that includes Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara, and you’re not going to have a good time. So don’t do it.

Enjoy instead the comforts of familiarity. We open Big Little Lies style, in the middle of a police interview after the murder of a dancer. But who? Kerry Washington – who plays Eleanor, the generationally wealthy philanthropist – is the one being interviewed, so it’s not her. She’s… Kate Mara, also known as Nancy, the wealthy wife of wealthy philanthropist Robert (Joel Kinnaman).

As a wealthy, irascible, hard-drinking man with a terrible, greedy family who promptly hires a crisis management company to control the press narrative, Robert is first on the police’s list of suspects — and last on their list of viewers, because we know how these things work. But then we remember to step back, roll our eyes and prepare to be unaffected.

Moss completes the trio by playing Mary, a stay-at-home mother married to Howard (Corey Stoll), an English professor. Audiences in the UK must be told, because it is not clear from their huge house or from their three children who are out of order, that this means they are poor. Likewise, Nancy’s upbringing in Bakersfield, California, meant she was already well accomplished. When the plot is based on the US economy, the series should actually come with a post providing conversion tables.

So Nancy died upset friends. The friends are even more disturbed when they learn that Nancy has been keeping secrets from them and that they have been keeping secrets from each other—some better than others. For example, Eleanor’s immense admiration for Robert was not the unknown unknown she thought he was. (Maryam calls it her “attachment to him,” because she is not only poor, but also polite.)

But Mary didn’t know that Nancy was having an affair with a guy named David. Nancy only told Eleanor. So Eleanor is the only one who knows that she went to see him after their night together, which then became the night of her death. Welcome to the suspect #2 slot, David.

Or is the killer actually David (Theo Bongani Ndialvane), an artist who recently painted Nancy’s naked form and whose resulting painting recently hung in the marital home? Maybe it is. Maybe it might be so.

Robert takes Eleanor to the opera with a reminder of his dead wife to take their mind off matters: “To hell with optics.” Yes. None of this looks much like friendship, let alone kinship, but it’s not the kind of drama that requires you to care about anything, never mind consistency or credible character development, so her dress looks nice.

Meanwhile, Mary is busy securing police reports and investigating the case against David. You find that unconvincing. More suspects, please!

It comes at the right time, along with more clues, more secrets, more discoveries, and more writing that oscillates from platitude to platitude (“Staying available for love is worth the risk.” “Sometimes I think you see my life more clearly than I do.” “Nothing made her happier than being your mother,” etc.).

Different episodes are seen through different eyes. The first couple is from Eleanor’s point of view, then it’s Mary’s turn in the spotlight, before it’s Nancy’s time to shine. It adds a layer of interest to the formula—and the mousse in particular adds plenty to its share—but it doesn’t hide the delicate porridge underneath.

There are occasional nods towards larger, broader issues. Eleanor doubts David’s guilt in part because he’s black and believes Nancy would have mentioned this to her “only black friend,” while Eleanor’s brother, Donovan — Leslie Odom Jr. adds disproportionate credibility to the whole through a small part — hates the fact that his sister has been carrying a torch for a white man her whole life. Financial differences between friends are also made clear. But these observations are nothing more than that.

So definitely incomplete. But the fun of escaping is enough.