America’s New Female Right (BBC Three) | iPlayer
Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
The Perfect Couple (Netflix)
Funny Woman (Sky Max/Now)
For a movement built on female ultra-modesty and subservience, “tradwife” has a strong look. Stateside, that look involves flowing mermaid locks, 1970s TV anchor-woman styling and makeup spread as thick as buttercream. The effect is churchgoing Barbie dolls with a dash of Stepford wife.
All this is on display in BBC Three documentary America’s New Female Right, made by British journalist and presenter Layla Wright, whose mentor is Louis Theroux. Still, it’s not about how the tradwives look; it’s what they say. Rising new right star, teenager Hannah Faulkner (“The feminist movement has lied to women again and again”), and “conservative influencer” Morgonn McMichael (“We are created to be wives and mothers”) are both involved with Turning Point USA, the fast-growing youth movement reported to have links to extreme rightwing groups.
Tradwife isn’t just anti-feminist – it’s a sprawling belief system: immigration, pro-choice, anti-vaxx and more. This could explain why this documentary sometimes feels too wide in its remit. One (older) interviewee, Christie Hutcherson, runs a group called Women Fighting for America, and patrols the US-Mexico border hunting for illegal migrants. Horrific scenes at the border culminate in a tense clash between Wright and Hutcherson. It’s grim, but you also think: shouldn’t Hutcherson be in a different documentary altogether?
This scattergun aspect is a weakness of America’s New Female Right, as is the sketchy grasp of context. There’s no mention of antecedents such as the 00s Surrendered Wives movement, which was inspired by Laura Doyle’s 2001 book, The Surrendered Wife, which advised women to relinquish control to their husbands for happier lives. There are also only brief nods to others in the sticky “alt-right” web: Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Candace Owens. Nor is there a psychological deep dive into what motivates hordes of younger, more gullible tradwives to sign up. What’s disturbing them so much about modern life that they seek sanctuary in stilted lady tropes?
Subtle, soft-voiced, Wright, from Liverpool, has a gift for wrangling access, such as with Faulkner and her evangelical Christian family. The documentary is also good at highlighting the ideological grift of higher profile tradwives. All that yammering about women belonging in the home yet here they are with their conventions and podcasts, looking for all the world like careerist go-getters. Go figure!
With the new James Bond yet to be announced, there’s still time to suggest cig-smoking, farting, belching Jackson Lamb, as played by Gary Oldman in Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, created by Will Smith, based on the Mick Herron novels. They wouldn’t even need to shell out on deadly gadgets: the famously unhygienic Lamb could just lift an armpit.
In the opener of season four, the first sighting of Lamb is a classic: staggering, wheezing to the phone – it’s like watching a corpse pulled along by a rope. Lamb remains the head of the Slough House team of M15 rejects/misfits, including River (Jack Lowden) and Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar). New faces appear in the mix: micromanaging Moira (Joanna Scanlan), who dares to tidy Lamb’s office; a new operative Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), who quickly butts heads with Lamb (“I’d rather not take any chances with a man who looks like he gropes people on buses”). Over at MI5, Diana (Kristin Scott-Thomas) disdainfully deals with new “front desk” Claude (James Callis), as if swatting a fly at a picnic.
As a death leaves Slough House reeling, a plot brews involving bombs, a master criminal (Hugo Weaving) and French assassins, the whole thing so potholed with spoilers, I’m going to have to step away and just let you know it’s good again: fast-paced, unpretentious, witty. It’s deeper too: a study of the dementia of River’s ex-MI5 grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) lends it quietly brutal heft. Slow Horses continues to be ludicrously implausible, and I wish Lamb and Diana would verbally spar more often (it’s so rare it feels like script rationing), but it’s still got the touch.
Mike White’s The White Lotus is so wickedly good, it’s created its own genre: black-hearted drama about the elite at play (as opposed to at work in the boardroom à la Succession). It was inevitable, perhaps, that it would inspire inferior copycats, and, sadly, Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, starring Nicole Kidman, looks set to be one of them.
Based on Elin Hilderbrand’s novel, it begins with preparations for the sumptuous Nantucket wedding of Amelia (Bad Sisters’ Eve Hewson) and Benji (Billy Howle). Meghann Fahy (Daphne in The White Lotus season two) plays Amelia’s friend Merritt. Kidman is Amelia’s future mother-in-law, Greer, an icy, uber-successful novelist (like all writers in thrillers, she taps fragrantly on a laptop for 10 seconds. Job done). Greer is married to Tag (Liev Schreiber), a charming womaniser. Suddenly, a dead body is discovered…
I’m partial to Kidman’s latter-day turns as a glacial matriarch (see: The Undoing) so was ready to lap this up. There’s some initial heightened tension and promising lines (“He makes his own bed like a poor person”). The cast, which includes Dakota Fanning, is impressive; at one point, French acting legend Isabelle Adjani floats through as a wedding guest.
Disappointingly, going by the first four episodes of The Perfect Couple, it’s a tad soft-boiled. For this sort of thing to work, as with The White Lotus, the script has to be dagger-sharp, merciless. When that attitude isn’t there in the writing, you sense timidity.
Period dramedy Funny Woman is back for a second four-part outing on Sky Max. Based on Nick Hornby’s novel Funny Girl and developed by Morwenna Banks, it stars Gemma Arterton as Barbara (stage name Sophie Straw), a 1960s comedian yearning to be the British Lucille Ball. There’s a lively sweetness to Arterton’s performance, and to the ensemble cast (David Threlfall, Arsher Ali, Alexa Davies and more), that keeps you watching even as Sophie’s ambitions feel underwhelming. The edgy sitcom she wants to do is effectively The Liver Birds.
As much as Funny Woman is about single life, love and societal prejudice, it’s also about television history: a pastiche of old discussion shows is extremely funny. Funny Woman isn’t as strong as The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, but it’s not without charm.
Star ratings (out of five)
America’s New Female Right ★★★
Slow Horses ★★★★
The Perfect Couple ★★★
Funny Woman ★★★
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