Netflix Drama Is Bad Satire But Juicy TV

I like my fictional TV women like I like my coffee — coursing with enough high-caliber force to take down a feral hog, ruin marriages via sapphic adultery, and power boozy brunch after boozy brunch. If this particular brand of desperate housewife sounds appealing, have I got a show for you: Netflix’s newest Lowcountry drama slash murder-mystery slash erotic thriller, The Hunting Wives. 

Based on the 2021 book of the same name, The Hunting Wives follows Texas transplant Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) as she becomes entangled in a friend group composed entirely of rich, Republican housewives. (Spoilers ahead.) They’re hot and armed and drunk, so of course, in addition to the interpersonal dramas that states with anti-abortion laws and crushing humidity are legally required to provide for their residents, there’s also a mysterious murder plot. And that’s just Episode One. 

Former Democratic campaign strategist Sophie and her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) have left the liberal-elite bastion of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he obtained a certain Ivy League degree, for the small and insular town of Maple Brook. Graham is working for local oil man Jed Banks (hello, salt-and-pepper Dermot Mulroney), so Sophie’s job is to get into the good graces of Jed’s wife, Margot (Malin Akerman). Margot isn’t just a gorgeous woman in a very shitty wig, she’s also the ringleader of the gossipy wives who run the town — and, more specifically, their husbands. There the sheriff’s fiery wife Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), the pastor’s strict and God-fearing bride Jill (Katie Lowes), and socialite benchwarmers Taylor (Alexandria DeBerry) and Monae (Joyce Glenn), or as Sophie calls them, the “mini-Marjorie Taylor Greenes.” 

Sophie left behind a massive mistake in Cambridge, one she’s happy to bury under an avalanche of megachurch visits, shopping sprees, and secret sips of $25,000 bottles of whiskey. But everything is bigger in Texas, including gubernatorial campaigns, illicit family secrets, and the absolute rescue flare of a lesbian torch Sophie is carrying for Margot. On its own, their affair would be enough to get the show at least two more renewal orders, but Margot and Sophie also have to deal with the murder of local cheerleader Abby (Madison Wolfe) — for which Sophie, of course, immediately gets framed. 

Respectfully, the entire meat of the series is its indiscribable, inescapable, horniness. This isn’t a CW Riverdale kind of sex show. There’s no fade to black. No, this is a nudity-filled sleaze fest, so sweaty that even the most seasoned romance viewers will end each episode with a flushed face.  Those askew wigs aside, Ackerman gives a memorably borderline-unhinged performance as a Texas housewife focused on keeping her trailer-trash background out of the public eye. She holds her own in conniving and manipulative markets. But it’s her scenes with Snow that are really something special. Margot gives literally pussy-struck, so in lust with Sophie that the worst, most harebrained choices can be forgiven with a quick caress of an upper thigh. Simply put, homegirl is down bad.

The sex is hot and plentiful. So what becomes glaringly obvious the minute characters leave the bed, or hot tub, or whatever local government office they’re fucking in, is just how much the satirical core of the show falls flat. Oh, The Hunting Wives is a hilarious speed-run through an absurd Southern town. But the show isn’t the culture war takedown it feels like it’s aiming for. The smoking gun is supposed to be the constant revelation of these rich people’s hypocrisy.  The local sheriff wants to become a Republican talking head for anti-immigration legislation and the liberal decline of their city, even though he likes to get pegged by his wife’s bright pink strap-on. Jed wants to run for governor on a family values ticket, even though he met his second wife when she was a hired sex worker for his birthday threesome. Margot wants to be the public face of anti-abortion work, while she recovers from the abortion she had to get rid of the high-school quarterback’s baby. The reverend’s wife can’t stop bragging about her son’s future as a Christian NBA star, and all the while he’s sleeping with a local girl who could keep him in that small town forever if he gets her pregnant.  And Sophie’s husband can’t take a breath without reminding people he attended Harvard. 

All of the characters’ public lives contradict their private ones. It feels like the entire season has one driving goal: Republican bad. Democrats also bad. Now let’s watch them kiss. “Open marriages are for liberals,” Margot quips. “Jed and I have an arrangement.” The conservative elites in this show are proud that they’ve built a public persona and political apparatus that can allow them to take away their neighbors’ rights while enjoying all the material comforts they desire — a characterization that mirrors how many right-wing bigwigs act in real life. But the satire doesn’t work, because the Republicans are afforded a nuance never given to Sophie and her idiot Democrat husband. 

While the Texans in this show refuse to be cowed for whatever lies, slander, or cold-blooded murder they commit, the audience’s stand-in and foil, Sophie, is shown to be just incredibly, ridiculously, stupid. The right-leaning characters struggle with their public perceptions, acknowledging that their beliefs don’t match the pretty speeches they’re giving on daytime TV, but Sophie and Graham practically shed their voting records and convictions the second they see a house with an in-ground pool and a nice kitchen backsplash. Half of the show’s plot and murder mystery revolves around the fact that Sophie, a new gun owner, has no inkling how to store a gun safely. She calls a group of Republican wives “hicks” for being armed, and then has the audacity to hide a weapon directly next to a box of ammo in her underwear drawer! She had a kid in the home! That’s gun ownership 101! She brought a Tesla to Texas backwoods. Where the fuck did she even charge it? 

The Hunting Wives isn’t even close to being a successful political satire. But luckily for the series, which already has fans clamoring for a second season, there’s no need for it to be. The binge-drop melee of sex, drugs, murder, and sex is the perfect formula to keep viewers locked to their couches for however long it takes for the clothes to come off.  Mulroney, Ackerman, Snow, and Newman turn this story of spatting WAGS into an explosive, addictive watch.  The Hunting Wives is a timeline ticking bomb, one that’ll catch up to you one way or another. Just let it happen— it’s better this way.