'The Hunting Wives' review: Netflix series is completely out-there and a lot of fun

WHAT IT'S ABOUT "The Hunting Wives" tells the story of a circle of high-society women in a fictional East Texas town, a world filled with big hats and even bigger guns, megachurches and Instagram-worthy brunch gatherings, buried secrets and illicit affairs. You know, relatable stuff.

Margo Banks (Malin Åkerman) lords over it all, married to the oil business bigshot Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney), who plans to run for governor. But, alas, here comes a Yankee intruder, straight from Cambridge, Massachusetts: Sophie O'Neil (Brittany Snow) has moved to Texas with her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) and their son. She strikes up a fast and intense friendship with Margo, much to the chagrin of at least one of their fellow "hunting wives."

A lot of crazy stuff happens over the course of showrunner Rebecca Perry Cutter's eight-episode adaptation of the novel by May Cobb. That includes, naturally, a murder for which the outsider Sophie promptly becomes the prime suspect.

MY SAY The cliché holds that "everything's bigger in Texas," and my goodness, does "The Hunting Wives" take that to heart. This is a trashy, ridiculous series, packed with more screaming and crying and shifts in tone and mood than anything this side of "The Real Housewives" franchise.

This is the kind of show that asks a character, in this case a grieving mother played by Chrissy Metz, to tearfully proclaim "I don't want fruit! I want justice!" It is a testament to Metz's talent that she pulls it off.

It's the kind of show that basically has a quota of at least one sex scene per episode. It's the kind of show that at any time might fling itself from a threesome to a shooting or two, perhaps a few intense fights between these frenemies, or a sheriff being injected with steroids by his wife, or an entire subplot involving a perverse preacher that has nothing much to do with the main narrative. 

It's got a little bit of a "Big Little Lies" thing going on, but it abandons any pretense of subtlety or restraint or attachment to reality in favor of indulging in complete and total excess.

But "The Hunting Wives" is made with steadfast commitment to the soapy aesthetic. The creator knows that she has to keep outdoing herself to pull this off for eight episodes, and she does exactly that. There's hardly a boring moment to be found from the first frame to the last.

The actors understand exactly what this needs. Akerman infuses Margo with an enormous, life-of-the-party personality, with a hint of mystery and a sinister quality mixing with a sort of infectious earnestness. Sophie seems quieter and more nervous on the surface, but Snow finds ways to suggest that somewhere within there lies some deep and barely concealed rage.

None of this amounts to great art, as far as it goes. But when it comes to escapist entertainment, "The Hunting Wives" gets things exactly right.

BOTTOM LINE: It's completely out-there and a lot of fun.