The
timing for Seven’s new series, Lipstick Jungle,
couldn’t be better. Season 1 is airing just as the Sex
and the City movie is riding the crest of a box office wave.
Surely all those who forked out $16 for the privilege of taking
in SATC will sit down in front of the box on a Sunday evening
for this show, also from the pen (or maybe keyboard) of Candace
Bushnell. Right?
Well, maybe. The problem with Lipstick Jungle
– just like its rival Cashmere Mafia – is
that it lacks the spark of Sex and the City, the TV show.
There’s a sameness and a blandness to the show that doesn’t
inspire confidence that it can ever reach the heights of SATC.
I guess the real difference between this show and
Bushnell’s earlier project is that it lacks both wit and
humour. All the characters are so caught up in their own high-powered,
designer-clad worlds that they seem to have lost the capacity
to crack a joke – or even a smile.
Once again, the female bonding routine gets rolled
out. This time our three protagonists are film producer Wendy
Healy (Brooke Shields); magazine editor Nico Reilly (Kim Raver)
and fashion designer Victory Ford (Lindsay Price). Let’s
just pause here for a moment. Apart from the appalling choice
of character names, I suspect if you asked 100 women to nominate
their dream jobs if they were rich and living in New York City,
movie producer, magazine editor and fashion designer would be
high on the list. The point is that, right from the get-go, the
show is pandering to a fantasy stereotype of life in the big city.
Candace Bushnell, you have a lot to answer for!
Anyway, these three apparently successful, together
women are (surprise, surprise) wrecks in their private lives.
Wendy has a husband who loves her but who resents her success;
Nico has a husband who’s apparently grown tired of her,
so she seeks solace by having an affair; and Victory can’t
get a man, but is being pursued by a billionaire. Yep, kind of
puts life in suburban Australia right into focus for you doesn’t
it.
It
will come as no great surprise either to learn that the way they
deal with all of this is by getting together for lunch or drinks
an awful lot and having a good cry about it all. Now, if they
were to do this with some snappy repartee or by making jokes about
the latest man on the scene, I could go with it. But Lipstick
Jungle is just oh-so-earnest, it’s like the televisual
equivalent of one of those dreadful self-help books.
Brooke Shields certainly looks good as the harried
Wendy; but she seems to spend most of her time scowling at people.
Now, that’s not Shields’ fault (it’s the writers’),
but it kind of makes you yearn for the “old” Brooke,
the one with the flashing smile and the meaningful look (and of
course, who could forget her remarkable cameo on Entourage).
Kim Raver certainly seems to be growing in confidence since her
stint on 24 as Kiefer Sutherland’s love interest,
and she doesn’t disappoint here either. On the other hand,
I found Lindsay Price to be so lightweight that she was virtually
invisible much of the time.
Sadly, Lipstick Jungle timidly goes where
a whole lot of series have gone before. There’s very little
new and interesting here to attract a new audience. Sure, if you’re
a big Sex and the City fan, you’ll probably tune
in to this; but for everyone else, there are surely better ways
of spending 60 minutes (with ads) on a Sunday evening.
Phil James
To see a promo spot for
Lipstick Jungle, click the play button below:
The
timing for Seven’s new series, Lipstick Jungle,
couldn’t be better. Season 1 is airing just as the Sex
and the City movie is riding the crest of a box office wave.
Surely all those who forked out $16 for the privilege of taking
in SATC will sit down in front of the box on a Sunday evening
for this show, also from the pen (or maybe keyboard) of Candace
Bushnell. Right?
It
will come as no great surprise either to learn that the way they
deal with all of this is by getting together for lunch or drinks
an awful lot and having a good cry about it all. Now, if they
were to do this with some snappy repartee or by making jokes about
the latest man on the scene, I could go with it. But Lipstick
Jungle is just oh-so-earnest, it’s like the televisual
equivalent of one of those dreadful self-help books.