Netflix’s deathly dull dark comedy will make you pine for the soapy, snarky thrills of Wisteria Lane
Netflix’s new 10-part series
Dead to Me reminded me how much I miss
Desperate Housewives – that perfect soapy, shiny, comic confection anchored by four great female performances and just enough dramatic heft to keep it from floating away.
Dead to Me is anchored by two fine female performances. Christina Applegate is the affluent, uptight Jen, recently widowed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver. She spends her time looking after her kids and calling in the number plates of any cars she sees with “person-sized dents” in them. When she reluctantly attends a grief support group, she meets generous-hearted Judy (Linda Cardellini, who can do this sort of thing in her sleep), who explains that she is trying to come to terms with the loss of her fiance, Steve, a few months before. They bond during sleepless nights on the phone watching TV and discussing John F Kennedy Jr’s hotness. But Judy is harbouring a Dark Secret in exactly the Wisteria Lane tradition.
Actually, two Dark Secrets. One comes out halfway through the opening episode, when Jen discovers Steve is still alive; the couple broke up after Judy’s fifth miscarriage. Apologies and forgiveness ensue and Judy moves into Jen’s guesthouse. The second secret remains hidden to Jen, though is revealed to us in the closing scenes.
There, alas, the similarities end. For Dead to Me is a leaden thing, neither comic fish nor dramatic fowl, soapy delight nor knife-edge thriller. Aside from the leads, who do as much as they can with very little and are dedicated in their efforts to do justice to the pain of bereavement, it has nothing to recommend it.
Its serious, grief-stricken side is a pale imitation of dramas gone before – most recently, Facebook’s astonishing Sorry for Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen – and its lighter side consists of … not very much. A few zingers from Jen’s gay business partner, Jen saying no to offers of consolatory hugs (I always enjoy these moments of normal British behaviour being pathologised over the pond), Jen making a rude remark in the grief circle about “Xanax-Ambien zombie moms” before the camera pans to show one right next to her.
Innovative it is not. As well as the gay zinger-delivery system, there is the sarky teen son, Judy cleansing the guest house (which used to be Jen’s husband’s music studio) with burning sage, the fundamentally good-guy ex (the underused and ever-excellent James Marsden, still awaiting the role that will make him a star) and the parcelling out of background information and plot drivers with little regard for realism. Whenever Steve mentions Judy, you can practically see the writer’s hand coming down to stop him saying any more until a second series is commissioned.
There can be comfort in the familiar, but for it to be entertaining and engaging it must be well made. Dead to Me is badly paced, tonally inconsistent and – above all – deadly dull.