These days there’s certainly plenty of Wicked (the film) to go around. But there’s also wicked, as in the type of humor that accompanies such highly rated and enjoyably female-centric streaming series as Bad Sisters (Apple TV) and Dead to Me (Netflix). Whereas the former hasn’t yet ended its second season, the latter has completed its three-season run.
Dead to Me (2019-2022)
Linda Holmes, NPR, points out that this series, which stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini in the main roles, is driven by friendship and by grief. In brief, in Season One Jen (Applegate) has lost her husband in a hit and run. She tries a bereavement support group, where she meets Judy (Cardellini). “Applegate is so, so good here as Jen: angry and vulnerable and intelligent, clever and sometimes foolish. Cardellini’s Judy is initially more of a mystery, and it spoils very little to say that by the end of the first episode, Jen has learned some things about Judy that she didn’t know. But that is only the beginning of the complicating and re-complicating of the story.”
Kimber Myers, Playlist: “…mines profound loss for laughs, marrying humor and heartache often in a single moment.”
Valerie Anne, Autostraddle, regarding the following season: “I will reiterate that nothing about their friendship is HEALTHY. Their entire friendship was built on layer after layer of lies, and they absolutely at no point should have been in each other’s lives. In fact, it’s only through trauma bonding they still are.”
You can watch the Season One trailer below and get a sense of the wicked humor:
And, as not to be a spoiler, I’ll leave it at that. Well, just one tiny point for those interested: some queer content arises in both this series and the next one up…
Bad Sisters
Judy Berman, Time, headlines her Season One review with Bad Sisters Is a Wickedly Funny Crime Dramedy With Big Little Lies Energy. (See previous posts about Big Little Lies here and here.)
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian, uses this review subtitle: This wicked revenge fantasy about five sisters who attempt to kill a monstrous husband is wonderfully cathartic, perfectly paced and hugely witty. “There are five Garvey sisters – Eva (Sharon Horgan) is the oldest and took on the maternal role after their parents died. Ursula is a nurse, a mother of three and sensible, except for the affair she is having with her photography teacher. Bibi (Sarah Greene) is fiercely uncompromising, Becka (Eve Hewson) is the slightly aimless baby of the family, and Grace is the only one even slightly mourning the death of her spouse John Paul (Claes Bang).”
Now in Season Two, Laura Babiak, Observer, expresses in her review subtitle a common sentiment: The second season doesn’t dig as deep as the first, but it still works as an unorthodox crime thriller with a healthy amount of family dramedy. “Bad Sisters scratches that cathartic itch of watching a group of women band together to get rid of a prick, and the series remains deeply, darkly funny. It’s still a very special show for its exploration of sisterhood, toxic relationships, and the kind of social conservatism that’s making an unfortunate comeback, but it looks like Bad Sisters has already peaked.”
Trailer for Season One:
