So here’s this group of women in an upscale community, and they hang out together, and some of their kids go to school together. Some of them have more money than others, and some of them have rivalry issues, but their lives keep intersecting until one day, someone suddenly dies.
No, friends, you have not tuned in to a rerun of Big Little Lies. You have tuned in to a slightly lower budgeted, but more than slightly familiar drama called Bad Mothers, which launches Thursday on the Sundance Now streaming service.
Like Big Little Lies, to which we will try not to allude repeatedly, Bad Mothers morphs at the moment of this untimely death from a sharp-edged soap opera to a crime drama that does not shed all of its soap elements.
To the extent this ensemble drama revolves around anyone, that would be Dr. Sarah Foley (Tess Haubrich) and her husband Anton (Daniel MacPherson). He operates a couple of restaurants, she’s a successful medical practitioner, and they have two lovely young children in their beautiful home.
As for what could possibly go wrong, Sarah has a feeling -- one of those instinct things -- that Anton is fooling around.
It turns out Sarah has the right instinct, but the wrong personnel lineup. But before we get into that, we meet the other core characters in their high-society world.
Charlotte (Melissa George) commands the center ring. She’s married to Kyle (Don Haney) and seems to have the biggest house. Her son Julius, a teenager, is a little older than the other kids, so Charlotte gets to spend more of her time on things like glittery fund-raising galas.
Bindy (Shalom Brune-Franklin) is a personal trainer at the local fitness spa, which makes her a virtual family member to her clients even if she has less free cash. Maddie (Mandy McElhinney) and Danielle (Jessica Tovey) round out the group.
Bindy, Maddie, and Danielle are on a slightly lower rung of the socio-economic ladder, but they’re close enough, and in some ways, sudden unexplained death can shake up some of those social lines.
The story begins innocently enough, with dramas like the children starting a class project to raise baby chicks. That allows for some humor, but at the same time, it starts to give viewers a sense of how all the characters relate to each other. Some more cozily than others.
It confirms they all have secrets as well, starting at the top with Charlotte and Sarah.
Bad Mothers, an Australian series that aired there last year, runs eight episodes, which allows ample time for those secrets to simmer and ultimately burst forth. It also gives everyone, including the women, the menfolk and the authorities, plenty of time to chase red herrings, figure them out, and try to sort through what might actually constitute justice.
As a TV tale, it worked before. Here it works again.