The Woman in the House across the Street from the girl in the window Season 1 review: Uninspiring thriller parody

2/5

Story: Divorced and suffering from debilitating ombrophobia (fear of rain) after the tragic death of her daughter, Anna (Kirsten Bell) spends her days guzzling bottles and bottles of wine that she sometimes mixes with the psychotropic drugs she’s on. In denial that she has a drinking problem, Anna spends time watching her new neighbour Neil Coleman (Tom Riley). Single dad Neil has a girlfriend, Lisa Maines (Shelly Hennig), who Anna is suspicious of. And just as Anna is beginning to get to the bottom of Lisa’s game, she sees the latter get stabbed in the throat – or did she?

Review: The seemingly unending title of this show, The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window, should tell you that the makers did not intend to make a serious film. This here, is supposedly a spoof on the thriller genre, and if you didn’t know that before watching, you’d perhaps be scratching your head wondering why they’d made such a bizarre series that’s neither funny nor engrossing.

So, series protagonist Anna is apparently still grieving the loss of her daughter Elizabeth, who died three years ago. Turns out, Anna had send the little girl on a ‘Take your daughter to work’ expedition with her now, ex, FBI criminal psychologist Douglas Whitaker (Michael Ealy), who was profiling a serial killer cannibal Michael James Ennis that day. Elizabeth gets accidently locked in with Ennis and well…

Anna still lives in the house she shared with Douglas and Elizabeth earlier. She has a therapist to work on her grief and ombrophobia and despite his advice, often mixes alcohol and psychotropic drugs that has her hallucinating at times. Naturally, when she then sees a woman die in the house across the street, and there’s no trace of said crime or victim, everyone questions if she really did see something, to the point that Anna begins to doubt herself.

Determined to figure out the truth, Anna decides to play detective, only to become the suspect in the murder no one believed at first. Can she find a way out and get to the truth after all? When put like this, the premise of The Woman in the House across the Street from the girl in the Window may sound interesting, but that’s the thing, it isn’t. Kristen Bell, as a raging alcoholic downing bottle after bottle of red wine, is still the most glamorous homemaker in town and she tries her best to elevate the series to some level of watchability. There’s really nothing else that would qualify this series as a much-watch.

Verdict: Here’s the thing, if you are hoping to have a good laugh with this parody, you won’t. So, then, did the makers unintentionally make a gripping thriller? Nope. This one’s stuck somewhere in the middle, not sure which path it was meant to take. The series ends with a cameo by Glen Close, teasing that Anna’s got a new mystery to get sleuthing. Anna has moved on from wine and drugs to being a vodka girl – not sure what we are supposed to infer from that. But here’s hoping that Kristen Bell doesn’t actually come back for another season.