Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art-deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. âI, erm, like your wall,â I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: âObviously.â
We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble â Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend â works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just canât imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse â and funnier â happens.