Imperfect Women may not reinvent the murder-mystery format, but it does elevate it through sharply drawn characters and a willingness to let its them be complicated, contradictory, occasionally infuriating, and ultimately compelling.

Yes, it gets a little soapy at times, but it's still a satisfying watch because there's an emotional authenticity at its core.

While it may not be the next Big Little Lies, Apple TV's Imperfect Women is an addictive thriller with plenty to offer outside its ultimately predictable mystery.

Despite significant heavy lifting from Washington and Moss, especially, Imperfect Women struggles to sustain its own momentum every time the narrative jumps to a different point of view.

An unfortunate title for a far-from-perfect show, one that takes a gaudy assortment of talent and delivers a limited series that’s much less than the sum of its parts.

It's more like an elevated, multi-part Lifetime movie. Still, Washington and Moss manage to bring some real emotional depth and texture to their roles as women on the brink of unraveling. Whenever these two go at each other in a scene, particularly in the second half of the season, they raise each other's game and make us wish the rest of the series could be as compelling as those moments are.

Imperfect Women isn’t the worst entry in television’s most exhausted genre, but it arrives so late in the genre’s lifespan that its generic blandness feels more offensive than jagged ineptitude.