Lipstick Jungle
NBC | Release Date: February 7, 2008
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
8
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Christian Science MonitorGloria Goodale
Season 1 Review: This is a high gloss, prime-time soap but it's a tad too earnest. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesDoug Elfman
Season 1 Review: t's not perfect. A few situations and lines are hyped-up "Sex and the City" moments, like when a distraught Lipsticker complains, "I need a cupcake." But if you can moan your way through such moments, the show gets more serious as it goes. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf Smith
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle has some good things going for it, including actresses in roles that call for slightly more maturity than we're accustomed to, and juicy enough meanies to give it a little suspense. Read full review
70
SalonHeather Havrilesky
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle is just as fluffy and soapy as you'd imagine a show based on a book by Candace Bushnell should be, it's still far smarter and more appealing than ABC's rich-and-powerful-lady fluff-fest "Cashmere Mafia." Read full review
63
New York PostLinda Stasi
Season 1 Review: All three actresses deserve better dialogue than they are given. But the clothes? They speak volumes. Read full review
60
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesCharlie McCollum
Season 1 Review: What keeps Jungle from being laughably bad is Shields is so charming and Raver so intelligent in their roles that they carry scenes that should just keel over and die. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray
Season 1 Review: I should probably feel bad, too, about finding all this silliness passably amusing, especially after having trashed its evil stepsister on ABC. But somehow I don't. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle isn't that bad. It's more like "awww."; Not as in "Awww, isn't it cute?" but "Awww, little Candy didn't do as well this time as everybody hoped." Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle apparently still isn't sure we get the point about bonding, because it goes out of its way to make it clear that even sympathetic male characters don't. Read full review
50
PopMattersCynthia Fuchs
Season 1 Review: The series has laid groundwork for minor and mostly predictable complications. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle is full of awful lines. Read full review
40
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: Thoroughly average and unfailingly adequate, NBC's Lipstick Jungle is easier to like than ABC's cold, cynical "Cashmere Mafia," but that's like putting lipstick on a pig, albeit a pig dressed in couture. Read full review
40
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 1 Review: The strongest and one redeeming storyline involves Raver. Read full review
37
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: You're stuck with a dull mush that works neither as drama, comedy or camp trash. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron
Season 1 Review: The show itself is so poorly conceived that you can only pity the viewer who gets lost in this Jungle. Read full review
30
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: It's nearly a certainty that someone will call Lipstick Jungle, NBC's new drama series about sensual and successful women, a "guilty pleasure," but it's really more of a guilty horror. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle wrongheadedly wants to have it both ways--to celebrate and explore the lives and loves of women at the top through protagonists who don't have the drive or the depth to make it there. Read full review
30
Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall
Season 1 Review: What the obnoxious "Cashmere Mafia" and now the dull Lipstick Jungle suggest is that it's not as easy to recreate the "Sex and the City" phenomenon as assembling three or four attractive actresses of a certain age and pairing them with a name producer from the HBO show. Read full review
30
The New York TimesGinia Bellafante
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle is a wooden clog of a melodrama squeezed into a flimsy, satin and marabou mule. Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: Lipstick Jungle is a strangely dour affair--its shadowy, chilly depiction of New York fits right alongside the NBC house style of Law & Order--and is almost misshapen in its clunky blend of drama and comedy. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman
Season 1 Review: Please say this is entertainment--and nothing more. That might not make it all right, but it would restore a whole lot of faith. Read full review
20
Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin
Season 1 Review: No matter how horrible the clichés or gorgeous the gowns, they can't distract from the androphobic virulence at the heart of Lipstick Jungle. Read full review
20
TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush
Season 1 Review: Which "Sex and the City" knockoff is worse, ABC's "Cashmere Mafia" or NBC's Lipstick Jungle (based on Sex author Candace Bushnell's best-seller)? It really depends which one you're watching at the time. Both are simply dreadful, failing miserably at making their glamorously high-powered heroines sympathetic, credible or remotely interesting. Read full review
20
Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker
Season 1 Review: Better to wait for the big-screen movie of "Sex and the City," arriving May 30. Read full review
20
SlateTroy Patterson
Season 1 Review: It's all the same stuff--magazine parties, feckless husbands, tempting male bimbos...but without "Cashmere Mafia's" redeeming air of farce. Read full review
10
NewsdayDiane Werts
Season 1 Review: NBC's superficial knockoff is just Lipstick on a pig. Read full review
10
Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan
Season 1 Review: What do women want? Well, they don’t want another migraine-inducing soap opera about the lives of high-strung, whiny female executives in New York. I’m pretty sure of that. Read full review
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