The irresistible cocktail of wealthy ladies and homicide has undergone numerous variations through the years: as a broadcast cleaning soap on “Determined Housewives”; as an upscale celeb automobile on “Large Little Lies”; as a totally financed journey overseas on “The White Lotus.” However “The Searching Wives,” a sequence tailored by creator Rebecca Cutter (“Hightown”) from the novel of the identical title, provides a brand new twist to this timeless system. Initially produced for Starz, then acquired by Netflix, “The Searching Wives” is a story of purple state-blue state tradition conflict, a premise that is still its most attention-grabbing ingredient even after a useless physique disrupts the proceedings. From that time on, the plot takes the reins for an addictive binge that nonetheless loses one thing by pivoting away from a compelling hook.

When Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) and her husband, Graham (Evan Jonigkeit), relocate to Texas for Graham’s job, she’s lonely and remoted. As soon as a publicist and Democratic operative again within the Northeast, Sophie is now a stay-at-home dad or mum who neither drinks nor drives as a result of a latest trauma. That leaves her with little in widespread, politically or culturally, together with her new friends, a coterie of megachurch mothers and MAGA sorts she dubs “mini-Marjorie Taylor Greenes.” There’s one exception: Margo Banks (Malin Åkerman), the spouse of Graham’s new boss Jed (Dermot Mulroney). Margo’s husband might current as a cowboy-hatted, NRA-supporting good previous boy, even mulling a run for governor. However Margo is extra open-minded, not less than with regards to indulging her personal wishes. “Open marriages are for liberals,” she says. “Jed and I’ve an association.”

“The Searching Wives” opens, as so many exhibits do today, with a flash-forward to a lethal capturing, ostensibly to pique our curiosity. However that shiny bait fades from entrance of thoughts as Margo attracts Sophie into her social circle. Margo’s minions embody Jill (Katie Lowes), a pastor’s spouse and subsequently queen bee of their small city, and Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), who’s married to the sheriff and much more of a rabid right-winger than he’s. To its credit score, “The Searching Wives” doesn’t draw back from the implications of its characters’ ideology. These aren’t trickle-down Reaganites, and their variations with Sophie don’t cease at visible signifiers like hairdos and excessive heels. The titular wives are vocally antiabortion, anti-immigrant and, most of all, pro-gun — beliefs Sophie has good motive to balk at of their unabashed antagonism towards a perceived different, which can or might not embody herself.

Margo’s friendships are intimate in additional methods than one. Per her “association” with Jed, she’s hooking up with Callie on the aspect, and Jill’s teenage son, Brad (George Ferrier), appears extra taken with Margo than his ultra-Christian girlfriend, Abby (Madison Wolfe). (Chrissy Metz of “This Is Us” performs Abby’s mom, a task that appears too minor for a longtime actor till the season’s again half.) This tangled net, together with ample nudity, shortly escalates from erotic to borderline comedic. In spite of everything, “The Searching Wives” takes place in the identical milieu as “The Righteous Gem stones” and “Landman,” and its humor is just barely much less over-the-top.

As soon as there’s a corpse to research, nevertheless, “The Searching Wives” grows much less distinctive in its social commentary and extra caught up within the race to the end. Between the investigation, Jed’s run for workplace, Margo’s affairs and much more scandals-in-waiting, there’s an excessive amount of to tie as much as proceed establishing a way of place. Twist after twist retains the story continuously in movement, on the expense of each texture and primary coherence, till the season ends on an oddly open observe — much less hanging over a cliff than trailing off into the ether. It’s too dangerous although. Loads of exhibits function a killer. Not so many mix Trump supporters with lesbian trysts.

All episodes of “The Searching Wives” Season 1 at the moment are streaming on Netflix.