Imperfect Women brings Elisabeth Moss, Kate Mara, and Kerry Washington together in a mystery about a murder among friends. I waited until all the episodes were available so I could binge watch it. I thought the mystery was very well written with plentiful twists and surprises. This review is spoiler free.

Imperfect Women received a lot of criticism because the women weren’t “likeable.” Why do women need to be likeable? To be fair, the men weren’t likeable, either. Like most of humanity, the characters in this story were all broken or damaged in some way by life.

Mary (Elisabeth Moss), Eleanor (Kerry Washington), and Nancy (Kate Mara) were best friends and had been since college. They saw each other regularly, knew each other’s kids, husbands, and lives.

Eleanor was not married. She came from wealth and headed a charitable organization. Her brother Donovan (Leslie Odom Jr.) was active in her life. In one episode, we meet her mother (Sheryl Lee Ralph).

Mary was married to Howard (Corey Stoll), an underemployed academic. They had three kids. They were broke but were helped to survive in subtle ways by Eleanor.

Nancy came from poverty but married into a wealthy family when she married Robert (Joel Kinnaman). They had a teen daughter who was about to turn 17. Nancy was planning a birthday party for her daughter when she was murdered in episode one. The remaining episodes were devoted to finding out who killed her.

The police, led by Detective Ganz (Ana Ortiz), ran through all the possible suspects. They kept landing on the wrong person. Mary was running her own investigation and thought the police were bungling things.

Each of the three main women characters had their own episode where we learned backstory and saw some of the tangled web that united these characters and their husbands. It was intricate and full of secrets. The path to the truth was full of lies, gaslighting, anger, cheating, and hurt.

With such a top-notch cast and a twisted path through everyone’s secrets, the series was suspenseful and always intriguing. When we catch the killer, there’s a satisfying feminist conclusion to that storyline. We think life will go back to a peaceful normality. Then one glance from Elisabeth Moss in the last seconds throws the whole thing open for questions again. It was a masterful ending for a mystery series full of secrets.

All the directors were women: Lesli Linka Glatter, Daina Reid, Nzingha Stewart, and Jet Wilkinson. The series was based on a novel by Araminta Hall. All the episodes are now available on Apple TV.