Stream It or Skip It: ‘First Wives’ Club’ on Netflix, a Sweet, Sexy Sitcom Finally Getting Its Due

BET+ series First Wives Club landed on Netflix recently, giving sitcom fans and romance nerds a chance to embrace this adorable Jill Scott/Michelle Buteau-led project. The series might share a name with the 1996 film, but its energy feels totally 2010s — in a good way. Will this delectable comedy become Netflix subscribers’ newest feel good binge?

FIRST WIVES CLUB: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Ari (Ryan Michelle Bathe) wistfully remembers how much her best friends were there for her through the good times, specifically her dreamy wedding, before admitting folks grow apart as we get older. Ari leaves a silver framed photo of that memory behind as she listens to a voicemail from Hazel (Jill Scott) apologizing for missing Ari’s politician husband David’s (Mark Tallman) fundraiser, followed by another from Bree (Michelle Buteau) explaining her sitter has canceled. We immediately flit into a montage of Ari holding down her family’s impressive life by volunteering for talks, meetings, and putting her impressive legal career on hold. When she gets a second alone, she signs in agony as we cut to Hazel cutting a track in the studio with the lyrics, “What I Want.”

The Gist: First Wives Club follows the travails of three long-time besties who reunite after one of them has an awful public breakup. Plateauing songstress Hazel (Jill Scott) discovers her creepy record label owner husband Derek (Malik Yoba) hasn’t just been cheating on her with a tiny young ingenue, but stealing her tracks for the pop tart. Hazel’s confrontation is captured on security cams and then leaked to make her look bad. However, her old pals, the unhappily married Ari and the recently separated Bree, come to her rescue. Reunited, the three friends decide to go out for a night on the town that becomes fateful. Bree meets a handsome bartender while Ari convinces Hazel to find a friend to leak her version of the hit song before Derek’s plan can come together. The episode ends with the fallout of Hazel’s plan, for both better and worse.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though the series is loosely inspired by the ’90s hit comedy film of the same name, so far First Wives Club feels far more like a sweet, soapy sitcom in the vein of Younger. It’s got the same amount of sexy humor, but also the commitment to celebrating women — and their friendships — in the later stage of life. See also: the New York City setting, the PG-13 tone, and the sequined costumes. Tonally, it also feels similar to HBO’s Insecure, which could be because creator Tracy Oliver started out as one of Issa Rae’s collaborators…

Our Take: First Wives Club might not be a groundbreaker in the genre, but it ticks all the boxes of everyone’s beloved hangout sitcoms. You’ve got a core group of friends whom clearly love each other — and who love to be around each other. There’s some well-crafted jokes, mostly given to the show’s clear comic relief, Bree. But most of all, First Wives Club is subtly serving soap opera. Only two of the main three characters are officially separated from their husbands after the pilot, leaving us wondering how long Ari’s picture perfect, yet unfulfilling, marriage has. Will Ari and her hubby survive? Will Bree take her apologetic nerd back? How long until Khalil (Tobias Truvillion) makes a move on Hazel? Basically we’re invested and we’re having fun.

Sex and Skin: Ari and her husband have a tragic sex life that includes him starting things off watching porn and then just finishing with her in less than ten seconds. We see butt, but Ari doesn’t see stars. Later, though, Bree gets her own trip to heaven via a hot bartender named Jesus. Butts aside, the show keeps it PG-13, but Michelle Buteau’s face takes us on a whole hilarious, erotic journey.

Parting Shot: After triumphantly getting her single leaked, Hazel tells Derek he better lawyer up. She’s going to see him in court. However, her victory lap is stymied when she is blocked from entering her own penthouse apartment in front of an army of paparazzi. “Derek, that son of a bitch,” she says…and that’s it!

Sleeper Star: It probably won’t surprise Netflix viewers, but the third-ranked cast member, Michelle Buteau, runs away with the pilot. Her trademark sweet, raunchy humor cuts through the melodrama at every turn and she can work miracles out of the worst written jokes with her incredible gift for line delivery.

Most Pilot-y Line: Honestly? The only part that had me rolling my eyes was the odd bit of voiceover up top, wherein Ari talks about friends like she’s reading a sign in a “Live, Laugh, Love” tchotchke shop. Besides that, the script is economic and witty in its approach to the material

Our Call: Stream it! This sleeper BET+ original deserves the famous Netflix bump!