Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the drama of The Hunting Wives, an eight-part Netflix series that’s stuffed with sex, murder, betrayal, duplicity, and deep, dark secrets that threaten to destroy the lives of its well-off characters.
Rebecca Cutter’s adaption of May Cobb’s novel, now streaming, is a soapy saga cast in a Big Little Lies mold, focusing on a wealthy enclave’s elites and the outsider who’s accepted into their midst and is seduced by their lifestyle—all as a homicide hovers tantalizingly over the action. Arriving shortly after the streamer’s Sirens (with which it shares more than a few similarities), it’s an eminently watchable beach read-y affair that makes up for its lack of originality with bold, brash red-state attitude.
In an ominous forest, a wounded blonde woman flees an unseen assailant before being shot dead. The identity of this victim won’t be revealed for several episodes, but The Hunting Wives wastes no time suggesting it might be Sophie (Brittany Snow), who’s just moved to the tiny, wealthy enclave of Maple Brook, Texas, with her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit), who works for local bigwig and possible gubernatorial candidate Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney).
Sophie is a former PR-whiz-turned-stay-at-home mom with a young son, Jack (Emmett Moss), and an intriguing C-section-ish scar along the bottom of her stomach. She also doesn’t drink due to a prior “accident” about which she’s cagey, and considering her background as a Massachusetts native (she met Graham in Cambridge while he attended Harvard), she’s not very comfortable in her new Republican environs, beginning with a big Jed shindig that turns out to be an NRA fundraiser.
Sophie has a panic attack at this event and flees to the bathroom, where she meets Jed’s wife Margo (Malin Akerman), who promptly drops her dress in front of Sophie. This is an initial sign that Margo is a confident sexpot, and The Hunting Wives elaborates on that quickly, revealing that she and Jed have an open marriage (although she decries that as a “liberal” term, claiming they just sleep with any women they fancy).
She also reveals that she’s currently involved with Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), a member of her close-knit clique alongside Monae (Joyce Glenn), Taylor (Alexandria DeBerry), and reverend’s wife Jill (Katie Lowes). With dark eye makeup accentuating her come-hither looks and a habit of undressing at a moment’s notice, Ackerman radiates neon-bright eroticism. Her libidinous performance makes Margo a captivating temptress and the series’ most compelling figure by a significant margin.
From their first meeting, Margo decides that Sophie will be her new best friend, and The Hunting Wives isn’t subtle about the fact that Sophie is destined to fall under Margo’s spell and develop a love of honky-tonk bars, skeet shooting, and living loud, proud, and affluent.
Everything about Cutter’s show is italicized and on the surface, especially its performances, whose obviousness is intentional and contributes to the lively, sultry mood. Despite the terms of her deal with Jed, Margo has zero qualms about watching Jill’s teen basketball-star son Brad (George Ferrier) pleasure himself as he sits beside his wannabe-goody-goody girlfriend Abby (Madison Wolfe). And she’s all about pressuring Sophie to let down her hair and have fun—a process facilitated by the fact that Sophie used to be a “wild child” before Graham put her on a straight-and-narrow path.
Sophie spends much of The Hunting Wives looking like she wants to take a big bite out of Margo, especially once the socialite does a body shot that entails licking salt off Sophie’s shoulder and drinking from a glass wedged into her cleavage.
Everybody covets Margo, and that omnipresent desire leads to multifaceted trouble for this community, what with Abby coming to suspect that Brad has the hots for the older woman (and is maybe following through on those urges) and Callie scheming to get revenge against Sophie for stealing her paramour. Making matters tenser, a shady one-eyed man harasses Sophie at a bar one evening and proceeds to make it his mission to intimidate her and Margo, tailing their car, breaking into lake houses, and hinting that these picture-perfect people aren’t as ideal as they seem.
Whether it’s Sophie describing Margo and her brood as “little Marjorie Taylor Greenes,” Callie assuming that Sophie views them as “deplorables,” or Graham worrying that Sophie, on a hunting trip, will “Dick Cheney someone,” The Hunting Wives firmly sets itself in the real world.
Nonetheless, it operates as a paperback fantasy about the thrills of being uninhibited—and embracing your true, unruly nature—and the inevitable danger of taking too big a bite out of the sinful apple.
Cutter spins a familiar yarn, keeping sensuality levels high while spreading around suspicion regarding the identity of the enigmatic killer, who in a flashback to months earlier is seen shooting a police officer who’s investigating the disappearance of the very girl that Jed spoke about at his fundraiser (using her as an example of why “good guys” needs guns). A mix of luxury, lust, deception, and deviousness that’s scored to country ditties and paced so swiftly that its energy never dips, the series gets its hooks in early and rarely loosens its grip.
There’s no ignoring that, in structure, tone, and character, The Hunting Wives is merely a slight variation on its subgenre compatriots, and a couple of its peripheral players are of only moderate interest—specifically, Jonigkeit’s ignorant Graham and Chrissy Metz’s Starr, the mother of Abby, whose relative lack of money makes her an unpopular pariah in this hoity toity town.
For all its piousness, Maple Brook is a place where opulence is the norm and everyone (even religious leaders) acts pretty terribly. The proceedings’ attempts to make bad behavior attractive, however, falters when it comes to Sophie, whose likability is undercut by the skeletons in her closet, which Margo and company find easier to forgive and shrug off than will many viewers.
Still, taking any of The Hunting Wives too seriously seems like a mistake, given that the show is the sort of frothy, spicy diversion that’s tailor-made to be consumed in one marathon summer sitting.
