Women's Murder Club

There's nothing gritty or particularly realistic about ABC's Women's Murder Club, but that's OK. The show is an entertaining, estrogen-powered hour regardless.

Laura Harris as Jill Bernhardt, the platinum-blonde district attorney, Paula Newsome as Claire Washburn, the surprisingly jolly medical examiner, and Aubrey Dollar as Cindy Thomas, the impossibly young newspaper reporter, do not add up to a Kaffeeklatsch or a therapy group. I’m not saying that they don’t occasionally discuss emotions (usually Angie/Lindsay’s), but it’s more grad-school seminar than touchy-feely hot-tub hangout.

WMC--that's what the hip people will no doubt soon be calling it--sprints energetically from the gate carrying genuine qualitative heft: charismatic leads, snappy dialogue and an agreeable blend of lighthearted and dramatic.

Sharply written, compellingly acted, this is the crime procedural ABC has needed all along, one for the “Grey’s Anatomy” crowd.

The show looks to be a smart, stylish crime drama that just happens to revolve around a group of women as so many have revolved around men.

It's funny and smart, with affably quirky characters who aren't cut from cardboard.

While the crime itself is only moderately intriguing, its real function is to let viewers see what each of these women does, how they work together and how they talk to each other.

Neither self-serious nor campy, the new ABC police drama is just what I've been craving amid all the businesslike "Law & Orders" and "CSIs."

It would be nice if the exposition were less clunky and the show did more to capture what is special about its San Francisco setting. Still, the actors are enjoyable, and their series in large part does what it sets out to do.

Women’s Murder Club is all right, but not good enough.

Realism, in other words, is not the show's strong suit; pretty much all of it (the detecting, the lawyering, the examining and the reporting) can be described as "lite.

Yes, the show's glossily generic. But the attractive cast clicks.

Women's Murder Club has the tone of a show that's designed rather than crafted, a show more concerned about appealing to a target demographic instead of just flowing.

The women's friendship radiates authentic undertones, beneath all the gooed-up personal drivel, although it's way too convenient how they always show up simultaneously at the same crime scenes.

For a show like Women's Murder Club to hit its target, viewers need to feel the desire to know these people--either because their jobs are exciting or their personal lives are spicy. But with this show, there's not enough spark to their jobs or lives to keep you on the couch on a Friday night.

Women’s Murder Club isn’t really a terrible show. It is efficient and well-paced, and it tries hard to breathe life into these characters. But the effort doesn’t really pay off.

Television's a visual medium, but so much of the plot is advanced during dialogue, I actually lost track a few times and ended up rewatching sections of the episode to figure out how they'd figured out whodunit.

Everything other than Harmon, who has thrown her "Law & Order" reserve out the window, feels unnatural and contrived.

The show inspires nothing but my apathy.

The new debut episode climaxes with a confusingly written yet completely unoriginal plot twist at the end. And the women characters are less confident than before, frazzled and more judgmental.

This "women's" show is such an embarrassing mess, it makes me ashamed to be a woman.