The Girlfriends
4.2/5
Critic Rating
In Season 1, it’s 1995 and Carole Fisher is a high-flying divorcee looking for love in Las Vegas. It’s slim pickings in the medical community she works in. But then Bob comes to town. Bob Bierenbaum is a plastic surgeon who flies planes and speaks several languages. Her mom loves that he’s Jewish - but there’s something off about him. He’s perfect on paper but he’s quick to anger and he never talks about his ex-wife. Who, it turns out, is missing and presumed dead. After Carole and Bob break up she tells her friend Mindy all about Bo...
Critic Reviews
Score: 3
Rebecca Lavoie, Kevin Flynn, Lara Bricker & Toby Ball • Crime Writers On • Sep 14, 2023
"While not terrible, this story about women who meet regularly to gossip about their ex-boyfriend suspected of a 1985 murder doesn't accomplish what it sets out to do. As an exposé, it's non revelatory. As a buddy story, its incomplete. As meditation a on violence against women, it undercuts itself."
Score: 3.5
Remy Varga • The Australian • Aug 11, 2023
"The blurring of the personal and the professional comes at the expense of the series’ clarity and the bulk of the first two episodes concerns Fisher’s relationship over anything else. Honestly the series could have benefited from a brutal edit and clearer direction and listeners are lost in the podcast’s identity crisis. The Girlfriends wants to be an empowering tribute to sisterhood and a true crime mystery but ultimately neither is achieved."
Score: 5
Mara Davis • Paste Magazine • Jul 20, 2023
"This delicious new series is Jewish matchmaking meets true crime. wild, haunting and addicting tale. Bonus points for the original music and sound design."
Score: 3
James Marriot • The Times UK • Jul 20, 2023
"Fisher’s chirpy, potty-mouthed, freewheeling style of narration begins to jar. This is a podcast that stirs up all my usual queasiness about true crime. I’m just not sure that we should be gawking over a young woman’s violent death, let alone chatting it over in such a jaunty manner. But an awful lot of people like this stuff."
Score: 5
Charlotte Runcie • Telegraph UK • Jul 19, 2023
"...the heart of a captivating new podcast...a refreshing take: for one thing, it has been developed in collaboration with No More, an international foundation working to end domestic and sexual violence. Perhaps because of their input, the series is sensitive, not sensational. Dark themes are discussed without slavering over the details, and the podcast focuses on the life of Katz and the other women who dated Bierenbaum after the murder, before they knew the truth. The podcast is an astonishing achievement from producer Anna Sinfield, a British hand on the tiller of this American story...this series is compelling and just gorgeous to listen to."
Score: 5
Lauren Passell • Podcast The Newsletter • Jul 17, 2023
"Much like Do You Know Mordechai?, this is a mystery backed by a group of friends that I desperately want to join. Murder isn’t fun but this podcast is. Justice for Gail. …"
Score: 4.9
Patricia Nicol • The Times UK • Jul 16, 2023
"...promisingly original true crime take...this is shaping up intriguingly."
Score: 3
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Jul 16, 2023
"The Girlfriends takes pains to tell Gail’s story with sensitivity...But despite its good intentions, the series never quite hangs together. Fisher is a compelling interviewee but, as a first-time podcast host, she lacks the required charisma and naturalism. The tone is also wildly uneven...currently, in trying to be all things to all people — comedy, murder-mystery, meditation on domestic abuse — The Girlfriends is just a bit of a mess. "
Score: 5
Miranda Sawyer • The Guardian • Jul 15, 2023
"Our host is one of these girlfriends, Carole Fisher, and she’s great: funny, deliberate, clear. the Novel-ists know how to tell a story, but also how to use sound production to enhance that storytelling. So The Girlfriends has a haunting theme tune, and uses music and real-life atmosphere, along with great plotting, to help keep our interest. It’s all really well done."
