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Netflix’s recent ventures with nonconformist casting, such as female-led sci-fi film Annihilation, seem like a step in the right direction for women in TV. Good Girls is one such venture. Its leading women provide humour and awe in equal measure.

The series kicks off with a comic supermarket robbery, the trio storming into the aptly named Fine & Frugal with balaclavas, marigolds, and toy guns. Slowly, we receive insight into our antiheroines’ motivations. Annie (Mae Whitman) grapples with her genderqueer child’s bullies, her rich ex-husband’s vies for custody and a wearisome, minimum wage service job. Waitress Ruby (Retta) faces insults from spoiled local teenagers and can barely afford her daughter’s medication. Housewife Beth (Christina Hendricks), after discovering her partner’s lies, must embrace her new criminal regime and provide for her family when her idiotic, prodigal husband cannot. These women bring new meaning to the gendered cliché of ‘juggling’, balancing work and motherhood with a life of crime.

After the debacle surrounding the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, all-female casts have been a controversial topic. Good Girls, despite its flaws, is an example of why the push for more women on-screen is essential. One valid criticism is that Retta’s talent is underutilised as Ruby, who seems to be afforded fewer comedic opportunities than her co-stars. Nonetheless, the show explores a mass of issues, including misogyny and assault. The men that the trio encounter underestimate them, judge them, and try to exploit them. David Hornsby deserves acclaim for his performance as sadistic store manager Boomer, whose excuse for sexual assault is that, “Women like that kind of attention”. When these women are faced with the prospect of losing everything to a gang of men, they show their strength. The stakes rise as the women swap washing laundry for ‘washing’ counterfeit money, which proves dangerous but lucrative. While ostensibly a comedy, the show is unafraid to put its leads in morally complicated positions.

Good Girls encourages breaking the mould of typical American TV comedies. The diversity feels organic, the character development is meaningful, and the writing is politically charged but genuinely funny. It highlights ways in which modern women can still be made to feel as commodities, subject to the whims of men who, in the words of Mary Pat (Allison Tolman), “Want things but don’t have the right to take them.” With some fine-tuning, these Good Girls could be great.