Sex/Life

It fulfills its duties as a bodice-ripper of show, pedalling lifestyle porn that still fails to satisfy Billie, but hopes to arouse its viewers with jealousy. ... Still, Sex/Life chases cheap thrills over truly sexy depictions of sexuality.

Shahi’s performance is one of the few things to recommend the show. As the scripts send Billie through an emotional maelstrom, she radiates lust, confusion, motherly affection, and determination. She’s game and vulnerable, even as the show’s repetitiveness strains patience. But Sex/Life isn’t all that invested in her character, either.

This is another show that confirms the “sex sells” adage. I only wish the story had the chutzpah to do something different with it.

For starters, none of the characters are really interesting, and Billie’s big dilemma basically boils down to thinking that she can’t have both a stable family life and an exciting sex life, a problem that seems to stem more from communication issues than from an actual immutable truth. ... In the end, the show is more soapy than steamy, with groan-worthy lines like, “Time of your life, baby? Yes, please,” spoken without even a hint of irony.

Shahi is far better than the material she has been given, though the rest of the cast seem to have accepted their cardboard-cutout fate, and I suspect it isn’t meant to be half as funny as it often is.

The primary failing of “Sex/Life” is its inability to balance the acrobatic-romp and woman-finding-herself elements of this concept; there's so much of the former, and not enough of the latter. ... The pacing of the show is interrupted by that constantly zigging-and-zagging timeline and by its elongation of certain plotlines that would benefit from more precise writing and character development.

"Sex/Life" is testing our tolerance to quite a degree with eight hour-long episodes centered on the tried-and-true "bored suburban housewife embarks on a sexual journey" yarn. ... Women deserve better – and Netflix has better in its library, frankly – but it'll do in a pinch.

Sex/Life is a show that has no idea what kind of message it wants to send, besides maybe the fact that it would be awfully nice if people could boink like rabbits while having a busy family life.

Sex/Life drowns itself in the shallow end, so to speak, by failing to even generate much heat. There are plenty of R-rated scenes—so many, actually, that they get repetitive.