The Hunting Wives Makes for Enjoyably Soapy Summer Escapism

In the streaming era, the idea of “good” TV  has often become synonymous with “serious” TV, full of stories of morally gray characters, feuding families, impossible choices, and bittersweet victories. This isn’t a bad thing, obviously, and has led to the creation of some of the greatest series in history. But it also means that we’ve had something of a dearth of shows that exist solely to entertain, full of the kind of soapy excess and utterly outlandish shock twists that mean the journey is often more important than the destination. And in a real world that often feels grimmer and more bleak than ever, audiences are likely desperate for the sort of no-strings-attached escapism this kind of programming provides. Enter Netflix’s The Hunting Wives, a frothy thriller about rich people being awful that’s tailor-made for summertime viewing. 

Based on the novel of the same name by May Cobb, the story follows Sophie O’Neill (Brittany Snow) as she relocates from the liberal East Coast to deep red East Texas with her husband and young son. Looking for a fresh start after a traumatic event that changed the family’s life, her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) lands a job with Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney), a wealthy oil businessman who is being courted to run for governor of Texas. But it’s Sophie who strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife Margo (Malin Akerman) over prescription drugs and anxiety in the bathroom during a lavish fundraiser. 

Margo is the queen bee of Maple Brook, the leader of a gang of equally rich and extravagant women—the titular Hunting Wives—who all love margaritas, skeet shooting,  shopping, and being wives who don’t have to work. There’s Callie (Jamie Ray Newman), the sheriff’s wife and Margo’s bestie, who is an avid and talented markswoman. Jill, the pastor’s wife (Katie Lowes), runs the church women’s group and obsessively monitors the activities of her teenage son, Brad (George Ferrier). The posh Monae (Joye Glenn) appears to be the group’s token friend of color, and Taylor (Alexandria Deberry) is the youngest, whose primary personality trait appears to be a love of dramatic fashion.

Sophie finds herself unexpectedly accepted into the clique, trying out everything from skeet shooting and boar hunting to late nights dancing at a local honky tonk. She’s fascinated by the group’s seemingly consequence-free affluence and easy access to firearms, but mostly she’s drawn to Margo herself, a hedonist who believes in doing whatever she wants, whether that involves drugs or bullying local townsfolk. The bond between the two feels surprisingly genuine, simmering with an unspoken frisson of sexual tension and an unexpected honesty that gives Sophie the space to process some of the trauma she’s been on the run from. However, their sudden bond doesn’t sit well with everyone in the group, and Callie’s raging jealousy sends her digging into the new girl’s past. 

The Hunting Wives will feel fairly familiar to anyone who has read the sort of domestic thrillers that tend to dominate summer reading lists or who watched recent soapy crime dramas like The Waterfront, Gross Pointe Garden Society, or even classics like Desperate Housewives. This isn’t a series that’s interested in reinventing the wheel, at least not in the three episodes that were made available to screen for critics (out of a total of eight). None of its initial twists are all that shocking, its cultural commentary rarely rises above the most basic jokes about guns and God, and it features its fair share of pointless nudity and sex.