Bad Mothers (TV, 2019)

When Charlotte (Melissa George) is found dead, her friend Sarah (Tess Haubrich) and the community's 'bad mothers' join forces to figure out who the perpetrator is.

Over the last couple weeks I have caught up on a couple of streaming TV shows.

I was trawling through TVNZ OnDemand and stumbled on this. On the surface, Bad Mothers sounded like a good idea. 

The show feels dead. It is watchable but it just comes off like a dehydrated vegetable. You can see what it is, but it needs cooking.

The premise has been done before, with more relish for the melodrama and wit by Desperate Housewives. The show does not have a unique angle to this idea, and despite the Australian setting, the show lacks any sense of cultural specificity.

What is weird is that this show comes from Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan, some of the brains behind the New Zealand TV show Outrageous Fortune. That show was specific in context and its angle on its genre - this show feels like it has been noted to death.

I tried looking for reviews of the show, and I ended up finding articles critiquing the show for its retrograde portrayal of women. I cannot argue with that - this show is weirdly conservative in how the characters think of their roles as wives and mothers. The big problem is that the show has no angle on what it means to be a mother, nor any idea on how to tackle this kind of soap opera.  

This show has all the resonance of a commercial. Some of the supporting characters have interesting subplots: Bindy (Shalom Brune-Franklin) is a former teen mum who is having to grapple with parenting solo after her parents leave; Maddie (Mandy McElhinney) is in conflict with her ex (NZ actor Michaela Banas) over their son.

I have to chalk it up to those two particular characters that the show was compelling enough for me to blast through all eight episodes.

While the supporting players get some interesting dramatic meat and humour, the lead characters and performances feel calibrated to one emotional setting. Granted, they are dealing with a murder, but there is a blankness to protagonist Sarah (Tess Haubrich), her husband/accused murderer Anton (Daniel MacPherson) and the deceased's husband Kyle (Don Hany), who form the key triangle of relationships, that made the central mystery un-compelling.

It is not good. At all. But it is not bad enough to be entertaining in the other way. I am kind of embarrassed I made it to the finale.

A pity. There is probably a place for a show like this that had more passion and originality.

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