We’ll admit we’ve never been the biggest fans of Eva Longoria. Going all the way back to her Desperate Housewives days, we always felt she tried too hard to generate laughs when she was better off playing things straight. But we give her a lot of credit for choosing post-Housewives projects that don’t always follow the expected path people think she’d take. In her new Apple TV+ series, Longoria plays a somewhat familiar role. But it’s the situation that the character is put in that’s at least a little bit different.
LAND OF WOMEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: The New York skyline. Then we see a woman in her closet, taping plastic bags full of money to her waist before putting on her dress.
The Gist: The woman is Gala Scott (Eva Longoria), who, two days earlier, was about to open a wine shop in Manhattan. When she talks to her husband Fred (James Purefoy) about how she finally found a dress for the party and the rest is ready to go, he gets a worrying text and tells Gala he’ll met her there.
At the party, two intimidating men, Hank (Jim Kitson) and Kevin (Amaury Nolasco) show up; they tell Gala that Fred owes their boss $15 million, and if he doesn’t pay up, they’ll go after his entire family. Gala runs home to find Fred quickly gathering things and saying he has to leave or he’ll be dead. He encourages Gala to leave town, as well, and that he’ll find her.
She quickly packs and drives upstate to take her mother, Julia (Carmen Maura) out of the nursing home she’s in, saying they’re going on a girls’ trip. When Julia grabs her photo album, Gala sees the picture of Julia and her sister at their house in La Muga, Spain and decides that’s where they’re going, especially because Julia says she owns the house with her sister Mariona (Gloria Muñoz).
They then drive up to the school where Gala’s daughter Kate (Victoria Bazua) goes; Gala convinces her to leave the side of her girlfriend Maggie (Layna Sheppard) and go on this trip by lying and saying that her grandmother’s dementia has gotten worse.
When they fly into Barcelona, Gala finds out that you can’t rent a car with cash, so she buys a beater car off a stranger, one with a stick shift she can’t operate. As they make their way to La Muga, which Julia seems to have fond memories of but only vague memories about the direction to drive to get there, Gala accidentally hits the trailer of a tractor hauling grapes from a vineyard.
The man on the tractor, Amat (Santiago Cabrera) is irate, given that an entire vineyard’s worth of grapes have hit the dirt. Given that they have no insurance, Gala is about to drive off when she and Kate notice that Julia has wandered off. She’s swimming in the river where she used to skinny dip 50 years ago, much to her sister’s dismay. Instead of getting out, Julia pulls her daughter and granddaughter in. When money starts floating away, Kate asks her mom exactly what’s going on.
They come back to Amat’s location and find the car doesn’t start. When they ask him to drive them to their house in La Muga (in the opposite direction), he tells him that he owns that house. At some point Mariona sold the house to him, not telling him that Julia owns half of it. Desoerate, Gala insists that she and her family stay in “our half” of the house, a notion that Amat refuses to even consider.
But as they trudge through La Muga, and Julia’s memories of growing up there come flooding back, Gala is determined to make her way into that house, especially after Mariona closes her door in their face in reaction to the shock of seeing her sister back in town.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Land Of Women has the same dramedy vibe as the Mexican series UFO Factory, plus both series have main characters going back to the village where their parents lived, only to find out that there’s a reason why their parent left there to begin with.
Our Take: There’s nothing inherently wrong with Land Of Women, adapted from Sandra Barneda’s novel La Tierra de las Mujeres by Ramón Campos, Gema R. Neira and Paula Fernández. It seems like a pretty typical “tiny village with secrets and gossip” show, with the added element that the people Gala’s husband owe money to will stop at nothing to either collect or make Gala and Fred pay in other ways.
Is the comedy part of the dramedy formula effective? Not really. Much of it stems from Longoria’s now decades-long mistaken belief that she’s a Latina Lucille Ball. She’s a decent actress who tries too hard to be funny in vehicles that have a degree of comedy in them. Even here, where she dials back the eye bulges and snappiness a bit, there are still times when she thinks she’s on a funny run and just comes off as… well, not funny.
Given how effective Maura is as Julia, a woman who is reveling in her memories of La Muga but whose cognitive capacity is starting to slip, we’re happier when Longoria is playing straight man to her. The more we see that, the more pleasant the show will be.
Bazua, in her first screen role, has potential to be good as Kate, though right now her role is to snidely say “great girls’ trip, mom” and be a typical zoomer. What we hope is that we get more backstory that establishes the relationship the women have with each other beyond just being moms and daughters.
It does feel like Land Of Women is one of those shows that’s a pretty painless watch, though, as long as Longoria realizes that she’s better setting up her funnier co-stars than try to be funny herself.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Maggie gets off the phone with Kate, who is calling her from the holding cell at the town’s police station — Gala told the cops that the only way she’ll leave Amat’s house is in handcuffs — and answers a knock on the door. It’s Hank and Kevin, who figure if they can’t find Fred, Gala or his family, they’ll threaten people Gala’s family love.
Sleeper Star: Adriana Gil plays Montse, the daughter of one of Julia’s old enemies from the village. We know she’s there for a reason; we just don’t know what yet.
Most Pilot-y Line: James Purefoy’s American accent in the few scenes he’s in is really distracting. For some reason, Fred’s voice is high-pitched and reedy and we don’t know why.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Land Of Women is a pleasant-enough show that has a story that will go down easy, with good performances sprinkled throughout.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Land Of Women’ On Apple TV+, Where Eva Longoria Is A Once-Wealthy Woman Who Runs To Spain With Her Mother And Daughter appeared first on Decider.
