‘Imperfect Women’ Review: When Lies and Truth Get Twisted

Sometimes when you get good at keeping secrets, you can start to lose track of what the truth even is. In her new series Imperfect Women, Annie Weisman examines the story of three best friends confronting the secrets they kept that may have led to the murder of one of them, in a twisty, sexy erotic thriller coming soon to Apple TV.

When Eleanor (Kerry Washington, Wake Up Dead Man), Mary (Elizabeth Moss), and Nancy (Kate Mara, Fantastic Four) meet for dinner to celebrate Mary’s birthday, they have no idea that Nancy will be dead by morning. As they are wrapping up their evening, Nancy shares with Eleanor that she is intending to break up with the man she’s having an affair with, someone named David. She asks that Eleanor keep this from Mary because Nancy doesn’t think that she will understand. Eleanor agrees to keep her secret, but when Nancy is murdered, Eleanor feels as though she needs to tell someone.

This is where Imperfect Women begins to really take off. The series plays with truth and lies in a way that elevates what could be a pretty straightforward thriller into something far more interesting. The story ping-pongs between the past and the present, and also shifts the focus from one of the three women to another in each episode. So each time that someone shares a truth with another person, we also begin to see what deception it is covering up. Or if not an outright lie, what omitted fact does it reveal?

The three leads are all really wonderful, as expected. Kerry Washington plays Eleanor, a single woman who has worked to create a successful company. She has no interest in a long-term relationship; instead trying to keep things casual. This may be in part due to the ongoing crush she has on Nancy’s husband, Robert (Joel Kinnaman, Silent Night). This is an open secret that the women simply don’t talk about, but it means that when Nancy is killed, Eleanor is the first to try to comfort Robert.

Somehow, Imperfect Women is able to make Elizabeth Moss look like the frumpy housewife throughout the series. Mary is first and foremost a wife and mom. She and her family are less financially stable than her friends, as she is a stay at home mom and her husband, Howard (Corey Stoll), is an unemployed ancient Greek mythology expert. As the series goes along, we discover that there is more to Mary than what we initially see. She also dreams of being a writer, which causes her to investigate claims more thoroughly, almost as though she is researching them. So the death of one of her best friends causes Mary to look deeper into the circumstances surrounding it.

Kate Mara’s Nancy is the character we spend the least amount of time with, however, we do get enough to feel like we have a cursory understanding of her life. She came from a more economically depressed background, so when she married into Robert’s wealth and exorbitant lifestyle, she often felt out of place. Even when she tries to make things nice, there is a sense of distance between her and the family she married into. And because her stepfather abused her, she had a difficult relationship with her family of origin as well. All of which have an impact on her relationship with her husband.

Of course, the performances in Imperfect Women are all fantastic. All three of these women are stellar actors, and they sell all of their characters. Of the three, Washington is the standout. She has the most screentime, and her part in the story drives much of the action throughout. But even with all three giving really excellent performances, it’s a struggle to see how these three women maintained a friendship over the years. The series had moments when the trio felt not unlike the three female friends from season 3 of The White Lotus, but there wasn’t enough backstory to tie them all together, which left their connections just a bit off.

Ultimately, it was the lack of deeper character development that kept Imperfect Women from being something that I couldn’t stop watching. The eight-episode run is solid, but it never quite soars into something that I would want to rave about on social media. Still, it manages to be more compelling than a lot of other crime thrillers, and if you’re looking for a dark and sexy watch for your weekend, you could do a lot worse than this slightly imperfect series.