Imperfect Women - My Best Friends' Secrets: A Series Short on Ideas

There is a paradox in wealth, a paradox that has now become a custom, at least according to contemporary seriality. As privileges and comforts increase, relationships become colder, and secrets and lies are, of course, ready to emerge: in recent years, the leitmotifs of stories centered on wealthy and bored people seem to have become a fixation for screenwriters, with the strong risk each time of falling into the "déjà vu" effect.

It is into this sectarian and only seemingly golden microcosm that Imperfect Women - My Best Friends' Secrets, created by Annie Weisman and based on the novel by Araminta Hall, also fits. It is available today in the Apple TV+ catalog with the release of the first two episodes. Let's discover together what awaits us and the story of the three protagonists, played by Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara.

A Less-Than-Compelling Start

The first episode immediately clarifies things with the event that will be the fulcrum of the entire season: the brutal assassination of Nancy, which shatters the balance between her two best friends, Eleanor and Mary, struck by this unexpected loss. The first is an African-American woman from a very wealthy family; the second is a former academic who sacrificed her career to dedicate herself to her children and husband. Nancy had had a lover for some time, unbeknownst – or so it seems – to her husband Robert, now the widowed father of teenager Cora, who cannot accept her mother's disappearance.

But each of them seems to hide something from the others, and the investigations into the crime, initially directed down a presumed path, will end up becoming much more ambiguous, threatening to bring to light the dust under the rug that has been hidden for too long.

The city of Los Angeles, where the story is set, is a metropolis of excess, with immaculate lofts, charity events, perfect interiors of deluxe homes, which seem distant and detached from any trace of real life. In this scenario, the death of a woman acts as a narrative, but above all emotional, detonator. More than a murder to solve, in Imperfect Women - My Best Friends' Secrets there is a clear fracture between before and after, an event that risks changing the status quo and altering relationships taken for granted.

Behind the Mask

Friendship, addictions, distorted forms of love in a jumble that piles up various and assorted storylines, some linked to a shared past, others about to be born in this double prologue, which offers an appetizer that puts a lot of meat on the fire but without a real understanding of the cause. Here, all ironic distance is abandoned to fully immerse oneself in melodrama, with the mystery, at least initially, remaining in the background, prioritizing the management and relative exposure of the relational dynamics between the main characters, complete with presumed surprises and plot twists that aim to further shuffle the cards.

Giving intensity to the protagonists is a top-tier cast, though not always fully utilized. Kerry Washington seems to have "subscribed" to roles of tormented women, and here too her distraught gaze gets lost in a kind of mannerism; Elisabeth Moss's Mary is more interesting on paper, even if for now she is still developing, while Kate Mara's post-mortem presence, for now appearing only in a couple of flashbacks, is still too timid to leave a mark in this first part of the series. The men seem mostly accessories, with the sole exception of the charming widower played by Joel Kinnaman, who, coincidentally, is Eleanor's best friend – and adolescent crush. With all the obvious complications of the case, those who understand, understand...

What makes it difficult to get excited, at least in this relatively timid start to the season, about the story of Imperfect Women - My Best Friends' Secrets is the awareness of having already seen similar situations countless times, too many in recent years. Series about murders among the American upper class, with the usual flurry of secrets and rot ready to come to light, are now commonplace, and at least in the first two episodes, this series doesn't seem to want to deviate from those established canons. A diverse cast can do little at the moment to make barely sketched characters credible; it remains to be seen how the remaining episodes – there will be eight in total – will manage to fill these obvious initial gaps.