Red Widow

Marta Walraven (Radha Mitchell) comes from a crime family, and when her husband is gunned down, she finds herself entangled by his underworld business. Crime boss Nicholae Schiller (Goran Visnjic) blames her husband for stealing his drugs, and forces her to work for him. It turns out that her brother Irwin Petrov (Wil Traval) was actually the one who stole the drugs.

All the underworld crime drama isn't anything new. But in order to get involved, there has to be some rooting interest. The fact is there is nobody likable. Every character is problematic, even the kids. The girl is clueless. The boy is annoyingly idiotic. The family is completely dysfunctional. So who cares what happens to these people. Certainly not me.

I have been forced (by my wife) to watch every single episode of this turkey. The scenario is preposterous, the acting mediocre, and the casting is absurd - don't they think we know what a Russian accent sounds like? Could anyone look at her father and find him threatening? Sunday night, Marta - who is living in a multimillion dollar house in San Francisco and has no income, no skills, no work history, and no prospects - gives away a $100 thousand necklace and in a fit of stupidity destroys $75 thousand worth of stolen cocaine, knowing that several people have been killed (including her late husband) over it. Then when Schiller says he wants it back...she is surprised? WTF? If there were a death penalty for bad writing, the writers of "The Red Widow" would be in big trouble.

If this great cast of actors can't make Red Widow work, then they weren't given much to work with. I watched every episode, and aside from the fact that it's just not believable that the intelligent, involved, loving Marta would not know more about the source of her family's income - it's also not believable that she emerged from her horrific childhood as this confident, balanced, ordinary soccer mom...not to mention her sweet sister. The brother was believable as an egomaniac twisted with anger and a need to prove himself to be the top dog, and make his father proud. Schiller's character never did anything bad, but we were supposed to be afraid...very afraid. After the 3rd episode I only watched the show to see how on earth the actors were going to make the plot twists seem believable because the writing was terrible. With the excellent cast, this show had a chance, but even this cast of great actors couldn't sell this limp biscuit.

A nice based-on series with good acting, well-flowing development, beautiful photography and a good score. It is not on par with the original NL multi-season show, but well-done nevertheless and I would have liked very much a second season.

The cliffhanger deserved that much!

We've seen this a hundred times. The whole suspense is centered on the truth behind the opening event being withheld from the main character. And because of this undisclosed truth, the red widow embarks on an illegal and suspenseful journey. We are left with a few main characters and an idea that we must stay tuned as these characters are painfully developed, all while hoping the red widow will learn the truth! But, we all know she can't learn the truth until she is fully engaged and unable to leave her new life.

Unless: a nuclear bomb goes off like in "24", or a truly exceptionally twisted plot develops along with the characters like in "breaking bad", or an outrageous number of new interesting characters are introduced like in "game of thrones", OR the red widow starts kicking butt after a brain download like in the matrix....this will be a painful soap opera struggling to became a good action/drama. With a boring head bad guy and a lame group surrounding the mediocre red widow, I think it's clear this is likely to be a one season and done flop.