Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wilderness’ On Prime Video, Where A Woman Tries To Kill Her Cheating Husband On A Cross-Country Trip

We can forgive a lot if a show promises us a fun ride of a plot. There can be a whole lot of plot holes, and characters that come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, and it doesn’t matter if what we’re seeing is engaging. A new Prime Video series promises just that kind of ride.

WILDERNESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a spider walking across a desert road. Then it’s squished by a vintage Ford Mustang speeding down that road.

The Gist: In that car is Liv Taylor (Jenna Coleman) and her husband Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). They’re on the “Great American Road Trip” that Liv has always wanted to go on, and the two of them seem to be in bliss. But, as Liv’s voice over, and the serious look that comes over her face after Will falls asleep shows, things aren’t as happy as they seem.

Flash back nine months, to when Liv and Will are moving into their New York loft apartment, after Will took a job that moved them there from London. At this point, they are living an idyllic life, one that Liv sometimes can’t believe she’s living. When they go to a swanky work function at a luxury hotel, they’re clinging to each other like newlyweds. She mentions to Will’s boss Bonnie (Talia Balsam) that she can’t work because of Will’s via so she’s going to write a novel and bake more, and Bonnie warns her to “not get chained to the stove, or you may find yourself knees-deep in cookie dough, while your husband’s balls-deep inside another woman.” Liv seems unconcerned.

As the holidays approach, Liv is going to surprise Will, who’s away on a business trip, by going all out baking, cooking and decorating. She gets a FaceTime from her mother Caryl (Claire Rushbrook), who has been bitter and obsessed with how Liv’s father’s life has been since he cheated on her years ago. Again, Liv is determined not to let that deter her.

Liv is giddy to see Will when he comes home on Christmas Eve, but when he’s in the shower, she sees a text from one of his co-workers that’s a surprise; it says “I miss having you inside me.” When she confronts him, he at first tries to deny it, but then admits it was a one-time, drunken mistake. Hurt and confused, Liv demands he leave.

As she contemplates her next move, Liv vows to her friend Ash (Morgana Van Peebles) that she’s not going to become bitter like her mother, obsessed with what Will might be doing without her.

As a grand gesture to try to repair their marriage, Will proposes they go on the “Great American Road Trip” Liv has always wanted to do; he feels it’s a way to concentrate on the two of them instead of being caught up in his ambition. Liv agrees when he says she’s always been “my person.”

Back on that desert road, the two of them look like they’ve mended things. But in another flashback, Liv logs onto Will’s laptop and finds a suspicious-looking e-mail from a “C Parker.” As she digs further, she sees lots of intimate e-mails between the two, dated before and after she discovered he cheated. One has a video is of Will and his co-worker Cara (Ashley Benson) having sex, and then he tells Cara that he’s going to leave Liv.

So, for Liv, the trip isn’t about repairing their marriage, it’s about ways of figuring out how Will could have a plausible-looking “accident” out in the middle of nowhere. So she has the notoriously height-phobic Will stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and she cuts a foot restraint in the raft that they’re going to use to shoot through some rapids. Neither plan results in the outcome she hoped for, but she knows she has more chances on this trip.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Wilderness, created by Marnie Dickens and based on a novel by B.E. Jones, has the sometimes campy, sometimes foreboding tone of shows like Revenge or How To Get Away With Murder.

Our Take: There was nothing in the first episode of Wilderness that was surprising or shocking. We seemed to call the various plot highlights involving Liv and Will’s marriage, and just what Liv’s motivation to take the road trip with him was.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the first episode, though. Coleman is able to project happiness while barely containing her rage, and Jackson-Cohen is able to show how Will is able to draw Liv in with promises and convincing-sounding lies without seeming like a complete scumbag. It’s that dynamic, along with Liv likely executing her plan at some point in the season, that will keep us watching.

Wilderness is just one of those shows that has some wild plot holes and somewhat scattered storytelling, but none of that matters because it gives viewers a chance to take such a tantalizing ride along with Liv.

Are we rooting for her? Maybe! Even during the trip, Will somehow manages to charm her even while lying through his teeth; they bond after their rafting “accident” and are about to have some passionate sex when he gets a phone call with what he says is a work crisis, but she knows better and goes down to the lobby to overhear him talking to Cara. That’s a pretty bold (and somewhat stupid) move for Will, and we were actually firmly in Liv’s corner after seeing that.

Like we said, there are some plot holes. We see Liv confiding in Ash, but with no context with how they know each other or met. It seems Will’s co-workers will factor more into the plot in subsequent episodes, but we don’t see them after those first ten minutes. There doesn’t feel like there’s any particular context to Will’s desire to cheat on Liv and tell Cara he’s leaving her other than the fact that he’s just a dude who can’t keep it in his pants.

But Coleman’s narration, usually something that detracts from the plotting of a series, actually adds to the show’s overall fun tone here. We want to see just how Liv pulls this off and what might happen afterwards. And we’re expecting things to get less predictable from here.

Sex and Skin: Some minor skin is shown in the homemade video of Cara and Will having sex. Besides that, though, any sex scenes between Will and Liv are strictly clothes-on.

Parting Shot: While Liv lies still during sex with Will, we hear her voiceover say, “We want the blood and the dead girls on slabs, and a look inside the mind of the sick fuck that did it.” Then we flash to her staring at a grave, with the voiceover saying, “I guess in this case, that sick fuck is me.”

Sleeper Star: You don’t bring in Talia Balsam to just give her than one clever “balls-deep” line. We hope to see more of her. Oh, and we’re also giving kudos to whoever secured Taylor Swift’s “Look At What You Made Me Do” as the show’s theme song.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Will tells Liv a story about a dead sparrow that his seven-year-old self wanted to get stuffed, she replies, “At seven? Isn’t that a bit We Need To Talk About Kevin?” Ah, those pop culture references that come out of nowhere.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wilderness isn’t one of those shows that’s going to challenge you with a plot full of moral dilemmas and high drama. It’s a show that’s more than a bit mordant and campy, but that and the performances of Coleman and Jackson-Cohen add to its appeal.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.