The Hunting Wives contains every single ingredient to take the prize for the sexiest summer streaming show in recent memory. We’re talking steamy extramarital sex, licit and illicit drug use, drinking, smoking, hunting, gorgeous women taking up with hot young men, religion, and ultimately – murder.
Led by a stellar cast including Malin Akerman, Dermot Mulroney and Brittany Snow, all eight episodes are now streaming on Netflix, so get yourself planted in front of a screen for a binge that doesn’t get much better, especially if you like your entertainment of the guilty pleasure variety.
Based on the best-selling novel by May Cobb, who’s also an executive producer on the series, the story begins as a fish out of water tale.
Snow’s character, Sophie O’Neil moved from Cambridge (you know, where Harvard is, and where coastal elites live) to the fictional town of Maple Brook, Texas because of her husband’s new job. His boss is Mulroney’s Jed Banks, who’s married to the charismatic Margo Banks (Akerman) who soon mesmerizes Sophie with her beauty and charm.
Margo in essence runs a clique of like-minded women, who don’t work, they “wive,” as they tell the very intimidated Sophie, who’s filled with anxiety about this pro-gun, anti-abortion culture she’s suddenly immersed into.
Viewers are given glimpses of what really caused her deep-seated anxiety, a tragic secret she wants to keep from everybody in the new town. Perhaps because of that fear, she succumbs to peer pressure and soon is not only hunting boar with the ladies but buying her own firearm.
These are even more secrets to keep – from her husband and adorable young son, but they pale in comparison to what becomes her real passion: Margo.
Forbidden romance takes center stage along with a murder mystery that consumes the town and makes many of its residents into suspects, including Jill (Katie Lowes) the mother of the murdered girl’s boyfriend Brad, who is also having a hot and heavy fling with Margo.
Oh, the tangled webs of obsession and seduction they all weave.
We also get the back story of Abby, Brad’s murdered girlfriend, and her mom, played by Chrissy Metz. Neither she nor Jill approves of the couple, who appear to be high school sweethearts from different sides of the track. Brad is also shown to be a bit of a cad, especially after Abby gifts him with her purity ring and then, predictably with her virginity, on Brad’s family’s yacht.
Hunting Wife Callie, portrayed by Jaime Ray Newman, thinks she has a leg up in solving the murder mystery because she’s married to the town sheriff – which also grants her access to privilege law enforcement information. At the same time, she’s also under Margo’s spell.
And who isn’t? Akerman is absolutely mesmerizing in this role and you can see why everyone does whatever she says and how she can also talk her way out of anything. We haven’t even mentioned her druggie brother yet, or the poor circumstances which spawned her into becoming the woman that she is.
But at the very end of the eighth episode, I found myself laughing uncontrollably. No, this is not a comedy but the cliffhanger was so ridiculous– yet it also means Season 2 is coming. Hooray!
