Malin Akerman in Netflix’s ground drama

In the third episode of Netflix Hunting womenSophie (Brittany Snow) poses a theory to explain why her new best friend Glamor, Margo (Malin Akerman), could sleep with an inappropriate younger man. Perhaps Sophie suggests, Margo considers the meeting as a second chance, a overhaul of her years of Lycée Litaires et Poices.

Margo listens politely, even allowing Sophie to have a point. But that is not the real reason, against it. She does what she does simply because she wants – “because it’s fun.”

In this, Margo and her series share a director philosophy. Hunting women Systematically deprives scorching scenes on conspiracy or sensible nuanced characters, juicy twists and turns on deep emotions or great ideas. Everything could be incredibly frustrating, if it was not as entertaining.

Created by Rebecca Cutter based on May Cobb’s book, Hunting women is technically a mystery thriller, opening onto a young woman stumbling in the woods while shots sound around her. But within three hours sent to criticism (from an eight -game season), it is above all a soap on the wickedness of the worldly in eastern Texas.

Our path in this island kingdom is Sophie, an old guru of public relations newly arrived from Boston with her architect’s husband, Graham (Evan Jongkeit). Initially, she comes out like a sore thumb, with her aversion to firearms, her minimalist style of the east coast (Graham describes him as “a little Soviet”) and the general feeling of anxiety emanating from her aqueous blue eyes.

Nevertheless, Sophie attracts Margo’s interest after a bizarre meeting and completely at the forefront which implies that Margo undresses in her skivvies in the bathroom while Sophie tries very hard not to look. Soon, Queen Bee (who also happens to be the wife of the Path-Boss billionaire by Graham, Jed, played by Dermot Mulroney) inducted Sophie in her exclusive clique of the party at the party with work, “Work?” We don’t work. We don’t work! ”

On another “more classy” program, the spark between Sophie and Margo could be sublimated in a stormy friendship, or take episodes if not seasons to become explicitly sexual. Hunting womenHowever, never leaves as a subtext what it can immediately transform into cheeky text. Akerman is deliciously thick removing it, purring practically while Margo makes fun of Sophie under the guise of teaching her to shoot her or trying her in a game of Spin-Bottle, while the snow reacts with a stupid curiosity or barely contained.

And they are far from the only ones that become hot and disturbed. The new connection of Sophie and Margo is tolerated by Jed, who likes to share his wife’s Playflies, and felt by Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), the best friend of Margo and the current late. It is a secret, for the moment, of Margo Secondary Age Connection, Brad (George Ferrier), who has a girlfriend more suited to his age, Abby (Madison Wolfe), who in turn attracted the not so innocent attentions of their pastor, Pete (Paul Teal). And so on, and so on. When the citizens of Maple Brook are not satisfied with all the naked abandonment, a TV-Ma note could allow, they flirt or masturbate or plot revenge against their sexual rivals.

Hunting women Take all this as serious as you might hope, that is to say not at all. It is not that there are no participations. The richness of Margo and Jed offers them an incredible influence (he is thinking of presenting himself to the Governor of Texas, on his provisional objections) but also makes them vulnerable to muckrakers and expanters. Sophie’s fragility comes from a traumatic past that she does not seem to have to go beyond, even halfway across the country. Then there is the promised death in the opening scenes, which has the potential to direct the series in a darker and sadder direction; It should surely note that the episode that takes place most directly, the third, is also the lightest of sexy nonsense.

On the whole, however, the series is much less concerned with making us feel or thinking very deeply than to satisfy our voyeuristic desire of beautiful rich people behaving very, very badly – as these do with shovel, oscillating with the impulsiveness of the lizard brain between unbridled lust and white fury. While Hunting women With decent jokes (I sniffed on a moaning brad, “Abby, it is not my heart” when his pious girlfriend interrupts a makeup session to pray so that God withdraws the desire from their heart), I have more often found to laugh at his total screening and his total disinterest in playing anything.

More than anything, it is this lack of pretension that takes place Hunting women apart. Where other red state dramas, such as Netflix Ransom CanyonCould prevail the tip of the feet around words like “liberal” or “conservative”, he comes out directly with him: Sophie is a democrat who deprives his frenzied news as “Little Marjorie Taylor Greens”, while they are vocal republicans which sound that they probably consider them “deplorable”. Certainly, no one on each side of the aisle, up to their declared values; Even the anti-NRA Sophie warms up to the pleasures of the possession of firearms in no time. But observation that political affiliations – in Maple Brook as in the real world – often serve cultural markers more than deeply detained belief expressions are warned in its own right.

If soaps like Netflix Pulse Provide a slow combustion approach, trying to make you fall for your characters as hard as each other before allowing them to kiss, Hunting women shows no interest in concepts such as true love or delayed gratuity. Little of its unmanageable and unforgettable whole seem worthy or even capable of a real romance, only of the kind of horn and consumption which could make them risk for a pipe.

And while prestigious dramas like HBO Succession could find it difficult to reconcile their high ideas on the corrosive effects of extreme richness with their more based pleasures, Hunting women Do not even pretend that it is here for something else than a good time. Of course, these people are assholes, but you can tsk-tsk their greed at your own pace; Right now, they are just there to play for your titillation.

No one is likely to be mistaken Hunting women For the deepest summer show, and certainly not for the nicest. I also do not suspect that anyone will say that it is the smartest, although the number of sparkling soaps that fall entirely flat should serve as proof that it takes a lot of intelligence to do something so pleasant. But in terms of pure exaggerated pleasure, I suspect that it will be difficult to beat Margo and Sophie and her friends to kiss and make her way through Maple Brook, to a bloody vicious end.