Pilot Review: Imposters

Imposters (Bravo)
Premiered February 7 at 10pm

If I don’t tend to watch Comedy Central, I definitely don’t watch Bravo. In fact, it’s very possible that the only time that I’ve watched a show on the network was when the “Project Runway” pilot was screened in a history of television class I took in college. In my continued efforts to at least sample every single series in 2017, I tuned into this show without knowing anything about it. It’s a much darker, more depressing version of “The Catch,” with a man so attached to his new wife who is devastated – and at such a loss – when she up and disappears and reveals herself to be a con artist. The twist here is that she’s been married before, and done this a number of times, meaning that there’s more than one person eager to find the woman he fell in love with. I’m only familiar with one actor in this cast – Parker Young from “Suburgatory” and “Enlisted” – though I do think that Israeli actress Inbar Lavi, whose accent definitely isn’t Belgian, is pretty terrific as chameleon Maddie. I’m not quite as convinced by Rob Heaps’ Ezra, but I think that the cast as a whole is good. This show’s premise is cool, and the fact that Maddie has leverage on Ezra and his family means that they’ll have to be very subversive in how they go after her. I’m actually somewhat intrigued, but I’m not sure I can invest in this show right now. We’ll see how I feel next week.

How will it work as a series? Having Maddie immediately begin another long con where she’s going to try to seduce Aaron Douglas’ monster boss means that she’ll be distracted while her two ex-husbands are after her, and the preview for the rest of the season that I saw suggests that there’s even more drama to make this show exciting and hopefully worthwhile.
How long will it last? Bravo doesn’t have an established track record with scripted originals, and so I think the strong buzz and generally positive reviews this show has attracted should do well to propel it to a second season. It’s certainly attention-grabbing, and I think that Bravo would love to champion it as a hit.

Pilot grade: B