RED WIDOW: A Different Kind of Desperate Housewife

I don’t like to give bad reviews. I can generally find something I like about a show and ignore the things I don’t particularly like. So let’s see – Red Widow has a great cast; Radha Mitchell, Jaime Ray Newman and Goran Visnjic to name a few. Unfortunately that is all I’ve got.

I think I was expecting a female version of The Sopranos set in San Francisco and what I got was more of a Mob Doctor mess.
In case you haven’t seen the previews running on TV, the show is about a woman whose family is Russian Mob and whose husband (Anson Mount) is a pot smuggler. For someone who grew up in a mob family, Marta (Radha Mitchell) is remarkably naïve. Your husband runs an import/export business at the marina – if that isn’t a TV cliché for illegal activity I don’t know what is. When her brother – who works with her husband – steals from the wrong guy, things start to spiral. Marta’s brother is arrested and Marta’s husband is gunned down. Don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler, the show is called Red Widow and you can’t be widow with a living spouse.
Unfortunately Anson Mounts character Evan was the best part of the show and he doesn’t make it though the pilot.

This is where things get a little too messy for me. Schiller (Goran Visnjic) insists that Marta work for him. There is a debt to be paid from the stolen property after all, and if she doesn’t pay it off, then unspeakable things will happen to her, her children, and her family. Why a kingpin that is so scary he is feared by everyone on the show would want a naïve housewife mucking about in his business is beyond me. To make matters worse, as far as I’m concerned, Marta transforms from housewife to short skirt, sky high heel wearing floozy in a matter of moments.

To round out the show you have the FBI agent with his own issues, who of course wants Marta to help him take down Schiller, and a bevy of other supporting friends and family that don’t seem to offer the right kind of support.

If you end up tuning in I’d love to hear what you thought in the comments below.

Red Widow’s two hour premiere is Sunday March 3rd at 9/8c on ABC