Television series

Good Girls

Name: Good Girls
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Crime
Released: 2018
Cast: Christina Hendricks, Manny Montana, Reno Wilson, Matthew Lillard, Retta

Three suburban women — a betrayed wife, her exhausted sister, and their underemployed best friend — rob a grocery store to cover their bills and end up laundering money for a gang instead. NBC's crime-dramedy runs on the friction between coupon-clipping domesticity and genuine danger, anchored by Christina Hendricks, Retta and Mae Whitman's effortless chemistry. It's for anyone who wants their heist stories with more banter than bloodshed, though the stakes are never a joke.

TVMaze rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy crime capers where ordinary people's panic turns into bold, funny improvisation, and you don't mind the moral mess that comes with every clever move.

Skip it if you want steady, cosy comedy, because the laughs sit beside real danger and the tone swings hard between giggles and gut punches.

What it asks of you: Four seasons and fifty hour-long episodes ask for a steady commitment and patience with plotting that keeps tightening, rewarding close attention to who is lying to whom.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Breaking Bad2008

The blueprint for this entire genre: a desperate suburbanite discovers a genuine talent for crime and watches morality erode one justified decision at a time. Vince Gilligan's slow-burn dread is the gold standard for good people going bad.

But Five seasons of mounting bleakness with almost none of Good Girls' comic relief; it earns every ounce of its darkness.

Weeds2005

Nearly the same starting point — a suburban mom turns to drug dealing to keep her family afloat — but earlier, weirder, and unafraid to be genuinely funny about how absurd the whole arrangement gets.

But Gets increasingly baggy and cartoonish in later seasons, losing some of the sharp character work of the early run.

Ozark2017

Trade the comedy for cold dread: a family launders cash for a cartel instead of dealing in stolen goods, but the core tension of ordinary people improvising through escalating consequences is identical.

But Much darker and more airless than Good Girls; the humor almost entirely evaporates by season two.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Good Girls

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Winter's Bone2010

Same question Good Girls keeps circling — what will a woman actually do to feed her family once legitimate options are gone — asked here without a single joke, in the rural Ozarks instead of the suburbs.

A seventeen-year-old searches for her missing father through a meth-poisoned Ozark community to keep her family from losing their home, in the film that first proved Jennifer Lawrence could carry unbearable tension on her face alone.

But Bleak and unhurried, with none of Good Girls' comic relief; this is the same desperation played entirely straight.

Widows2018

Four women left with their dead husbands' debts and a heist plan pull off exactly the kind of competent, high-stakes crime Good Girls' trio keeps stumbling toward. Tense, stylish, led by a phenomenal Viola Davis.

But It's a single two-hour film, not a series, so you lose the slow-build relationship comedy of the show.

Claws2017

Same engine — ordinary women laundering money through a legitimate front while trying not to get killed — but dialed up to lurid, neon-lit camp in a Florida nail salon. Pure, gleeful trash.

But Broader and more soap-operatic than Good Girls; if you liked the show's grounded tone, this might feel like too much.

Orange Is the New Black2013

A different side of the same coin: what happens after the ordinary woman actually gets caught. Sharp, funny, and full of the same instinct for finding humanity in people the world has written off.

But Seven seasons is a long haul, and the back half loses some of the early seasons' focus and bite.

Fargo2014

Each season resets with new ordinary Midwesterners getting pulled into violence they're wildly unprepared for, told with the same deadpan comic timing and sudden lurches into real danger that Good Girls does so well.

But It's an anthology, so the character investment resets every season — no long-running trio to root for.

Killing Eve2018

Swap suburban desperation for obsessive pursuit, but keep the wit, the style, and the sense that the women involved are having far more fun with crime than they're supposed to.

But Less grounded and more heightened than Good Girls; it's about obsession more than survival, so the stakes feel different.

Desperate Housewives2004

The lighter, soapier ancestor: suburban wives with secrets, dark comedy simmering under manicured lawns, and the same pleasure in watching respectable women get away with things they shouldn't.

But Much less interested in real financial stakes than Good Girls; the crimes here are mostly personal, not economic.

La Casa de Papel2017

Ordinary people with nothing left to lose banding together to break the law for money — the exact structural engine of Good Girls — but told in Spanish as an operatic, red-jumpsuited heist thriller.

A crew of strangers with nicknames and nothing to lose pull off an outrageous mint heist, and the show turns their desperation and loyalty into full-blown melodrama with real emotional stakes underneath the spectacle.

But Far more soap opera than sitcom, and subtitled if you watch it in the original Spanish, which you should.

Fun with Dick and Jane1977

The exact same premise — a comfortable household loses everything and turns to crime almost by accident — played four decades earlier as pure screwball comedy, with none of the moral hand-wringing.

A newly unemployed couple starts robbing stores to keep up appearances in their nice neighborhood, and the film mines real financial anxiety for slapstick rather than suspense. Breezy, dated, and genuinely funny.

But Its politics and gender dynamics feel distinctly of 1977, and it's far slighter than Good Girls' longer arcs.