Marc Cherry looks at the darker side of love and marriage in Why Women Kill, starring (from left) Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu and Kirby Howell-Baptiste.
Marc Cherry looks at the darker side of love and marriage in Why Women Kill, starring (from left) Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu and Kirby Howell-Baptiste.
Opinion by Anna Murray
Writes about television for the New Zealand Herald.
American TV writer and producer Marc Cherry loves himself a salacious title.
He's the man who gave us Desperate Housewives. Then he dreamed up Devious Maids.
And now he's brought us Why Women Kill, a show whose opening credits feature a jaunty comic book depiction of women brutally murderingtheir husbands for acts such as buying them an iron for their anniversary. (Fair enough, I guess?)
Cherry's new series tells the stories of three women who have all lived in the same luxurious Pasadena mansion at different times – more specifically, 1963, 1984 and 2019.
Ginnifer Goodwin stars as Beth Ann, an obedient '60s housewife who lives to clean her house and ensure her husband Rob (Sam Jaeger) is never without a full cup of coffee or a hot meal.
Lucy Liu is dramatic '80s socialite Simone who's discovered her third husband Karl (Jack Davenport) has been hiding a rather big secret.
And Kirby Howell-Baptiste plays Taylor, our present-day lawyer - and "hot feminist" - who has an open marriage with her husband Eli (Reid Scott).
As we discover in the first episode of the series, the reason why women kill appears to be men. All three of the main characters learn they have reason to distrust their husbands and heavy hints are dropped they'll be solving their marital issues with a spot of murder.
This is all par for the course for Cherry, obviously. He has a long history writing about women and their nefarious activities in the 'burbs.
The entire world went crazy for his Desperate Housewives when that show launched in 2004, with viewers sticking with it even as it jumped the shark multiple times.
Audiences loved seeing bored housewives covering up murders, accidentally burning down houses and having affairs with 17-year-old gardeners – which I still can't believe nobody made a fuss about at the time. (Although the 'woman of a certain age having an affair with a teenager' trope is obviously still a favourite of Cherry's, given he's trotted it out again for Why Women Kill. Just stop it. Please.)
Cherry has said his latest series is an examination of how women, men and marriage have all changed over the years - but what hasn't changed at all is the tone of his shows.
Why Women Kill has the same look and feel as those heady days of Desperate Housewives and if it had also been released in 2004, I probably would have loved it.
But it's 2019 and we've been positively spoilt by shows that have done a much better job at portraying multifaceted female characters of late. We have Big Little Lies, Orange is the New Black, and Grace and Frankie, just to name a few.
Lucy Liu in Why Women Kill.
We also now have the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose work on Fleabag and Killing Eve has been incredible in deftly weaving comedy through dark material, while gifting the audience wonderfully complicated women. Why Women Kill simply looks dated by comparison.
Still, as a frothy, campy take on women's revenge fantasies, Why Women Kill serves as a bit of mindless entertainment.
Liu, in particular, is fun to watch as she dramatically chews the scenery and shouts lines like: "F*** you! I want to see you suffer in a one-bedroom apartment next to the airport and you will NOT deny me that pleasure!"
There will no doubt be a few twists and turns along the way, too, given Cherry's talent for dreaming up outrageous storylines.
And there will be plenty of viewers who will keep coming back for the melodramatic costuming and decor alone, particularly during the scenes from the '80s. It all looks and sounds like a soap opera – albeit a high-end one.
If nothing else, Why Women Kill should pair perfectly with the sherry and leftover trifle these coming holidays. At a time of the year when we're all punishing our bodies through overindulgence, we may as well do the same to our brains by bingeing the TV equivalent.
• Why Women Kill is available to stream now on TVNZ OnDemand.
