Crime
Imperfect Women
Between the deception, backstabbing and romantic drama, Imperfect Women often feels more like a soap opera than a murder mystery.
“No one is ever completely happy here in Lisbon.”
So says Fernando, a mysterious traveler who hops on a tour bus filled with Spaniards heading out on what they hope will be a fun-filled trip to Portugal. But barely a day into the tour, and many suspect Fernando may be right.
The tour is led by Cristina, who apparently took over the tour agency in a divorce settlement. The group’s Lisbon hotel is so sketchy that even cockroaches are scared to live there.
Oh, and Fernando winds up dead in a bathtub. That’ll put a damper on things.
The police believe Fernando died of a heart attack. But four of the tour group’s members aren’t so sure. Mysterious Alicia and swaggering Fabio discovered the body, and both noticed some telltale marks indicative of death by electrocution. Daniel—a young man dealing with autism spectrum disorder—is determined to catalog all clues, suspects and potential murder weapons on a newly swiped corkboard. And Pura? Well, she just loves a good mystery—and to be part of a club.
But these snoops aren’t exactly innocent themselves. Each hides a secret. And as Daniel points out, one of them could be Fernando’s murderer, too.
But they’re certainly not lacking in suspects. Really, anyone on the tour might be fingered as a possible killer: Daniel’s constantly sparring parents. The two women on a bachelorette trip. The young woman who seemed particularly broken up about Fernando’s death. Even the hotel staff might be guilty.
Oh, and hey, it just might’ve been that one-armed man lurking in the alleyway behind the hotel.
Lisbon may indeed look lovely. But as Fernando moodily intoned before his untimely death, the city holds many shadows. It’s up to this small cadre of amateur sleuths to shine a light on the picture.
If you think that the English-speaking world has a lock on drawing-house murder mysteries, this Spanish-Portuguese import would like to have a word with you. If It’s Tuesday, It’s Murder, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, has all the ingredients you’d expect in an Agatha Christie or Rian Johnson whodunit: dead bodies, colorful suspects and more motives than can comfortably fit on a hotel buffet.
But the show also ladles out a few content concerns, as well.
Obviously, every murder mystery will involve at least one murder. And while If It’s Tuesday isn’t particularly grotesque, it does lean into the macabre. Dead bodies pop onto the screen now and then. We see a bit of blood. In the first episode, our team of amateur sleuths go to Lisbon’s “Museum of Crime” and ogle a severed head floating in formaldehyde. We see a bit of sensuality here, too.
But the biggest issue is language, for which the show earns its TV-MA rating. Viewers will hear (or read, if you’re watching the show with subtitles instead of the English dub) a smattering of profanities that would never make it into a Christie novel, including f- and s-words.
During the bus tour, guide Cristina tells the group that “my stories are suitable for all audiences.” The same cannot be said of If It’s Tuesday, It’s Murder. While it’s far more navigable than many a television series predicated on murder, it’s not fit for the whole fam.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
A group of Spaniards pile onto a tour bus for a week-long vacation to Lisbon, Portugal. The bus winds up picking another tourist, the hat-wearing Fernando Paredes, along the way. Fernando quickly becomes a focal point for the tour’s first day: He introduces himself to Fabio and speaks to the man as if they have an ongoing scheme, even though Fabio himself doesn’t seem to recognize Fernando. Fernando saves Pura from getting hit by an oncoming car. Fernando sidles up to a young woman named Monida and tries to make conversation—but Monica suggests he hit on someone his own age. And when in the privacy of his room, he plays a melancholy tune from a music box over and over and over again.
The next morning, two tour members walk into Fernando’s room and find him dead in the bathtub.
Fernando was apparently taking a bath, and we see his body in the bathtub from, essentially, the waist up. (The water covers anything critical.) We also see Fabio shirtless. A couple of women go out on the town in short skirts. The tour’s guide insinuates that she received the tour business from her ex-husband in a divorce settlement. The divorce was apparently precipitated by the man having an affair with a much younger woman.
Fernando’s dead body bears some telltale scars on his arms that, according to Alicia, suggest he was electrocuted. Fabio, Alicia, Daniel and Pura find the alleged murder weapon—a hair dryer—in the possession of a vagrant junk collector. The collector threatens Daniel with a knife (which turns out to be fake).
Several vacationers tour Lisbon’s Museum of Crime, where they (and we) see a disembodied head in a jar of formaldehyde (the remains of a serial killer who murdered between 20 and 70 people, we’re told), a bloody shirt and a few crime scene photos. (We don’t see those photos clearly, but what we do see of them suggest that one is of a dead, somewhat mangled body.) Daniel talks with a woman in a wheelchair about her chances of surviving a hotel fire. He also notes what bodily evidence to look for in strangulation cases.
We learn the tour group’s hotel has had a colorful history, serving as a “pilgrimage hostel, a prison, an opium den and even an exclusive brothel,” according to the hotel’s manager. He adds that the building survived a massive earthquake in 1755 that destroyed much of the rest of the city. “All the churches were in ruins,” he intones, “but thankfully, the brothels stood strong.” We hear references to that earthquake and the tsunami that followed—both of which killed a great many people in Lisbon.
Characters—nearly all of them—keep secrets. Some lie.
Cristina crouches by a small fridge and drinks a beer. She mentions that most of her stories about Lisbon involve bars. Two women get seriously drunk one evening, and one of them complains she’s sure to vomit. The hotel’s maid is constantly smoking.
Characters say the f-word once and the s-word, “b–ch” and “h—” twice each. God’s name is misused once. We see the back of a statue of Christ and hear references to saints and archbishops.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Between the deception, backstabbing and romantic drama, Imperfect Women often feels more like a soap opera than a murder mystery.
‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ is perhaps the best description for the content of the show that I can think of.
Wilson Fisk says he’s changed. But Daredevil: Born Again? It feels much the same as its Netflix predecessor—if not bloodier.
‘Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat’ continues fooling its main subject for laughs—but it also comes with some content to consider.