Red Widow

The series stars Radha Mitchell as Marta Walraven, a housewife from Northern California whose husband, a marijuana smuggler, was killed. She has to continue his work to protect her family. ==Cast and characters==

• Radha Mitchell as Marta Walraven (née Petrova), housewife and widow of Evan Walraven, a marijuana smuggler • Goran Visnjic as Nicholae Schiller, San Francisco's premier crime boss and the man to whom Marta owes money • Clifton Collins Jr. as James Ramos, the FBI agent assigned to Marta's case • Rade Šerbedžija as Andrei Petrov, Marta's father, an organized crime boss in the Richmond and a rival of Schiller • Luke Goss as Luther, one of Andrei's trusted men • Jaime Ray Newman as Katrina "Kat" Petrova, Marta's and Irwin's sister • Wil Traval as Irwin Petrov, Marta and Kat's brother, and business partner to Mike and Evan, and now Marta • Lee Tergesen as Mike Tomlin, business partner to Irwin and Evan, and now Marta • Sterling Beaumon as Gabriel Walraven, Marta's older son • Jakob Salvati as Boris "Bobo" Walraven, Marta's younger son • Erin Moriarty as Natalie Walraven, Marta's daughter and middle child • Suleka Mathew as Dina Tomlin, Mike's wife and Marta's long-time best friend • Pedro Pascal as Jay Castillo, Katrina's husband, a tattoo artist ==Episodes==

The show received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 24% approval rating, based on 34 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The website's consensus reads, "Red Widow boasts a strong cast, but its outlandish premise and lackluster execution keep it from being anything but middle-of-the-road." Metacritic assigned the show a score of 48 out of 100 based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Mary McNamara, the Los Angeles Times television critic, called the show's two-hour pilot "high-aspiring but poorly executed"; according to McNamara: Working from the original Dutch series Penoza, Red Widow is plagued by sanctimony. It wants to have it all: a sympathetic soccer mom heroine suddenly willing and able to do business with murderous thugs....It's easy to see the sort of show [creator Melissa] Rosenberg envisioned, one in which a "normal" woman finds herself juggling the mundane tasks of motherhood with the high-octane exploits required to keep one step in front of a drug lord. But the show is too busy hedging its bets—hey, he was just running pot, not the hard stuff, and she feels sort of guilty about dragging him into it—that it undercuts its own potential power. ==DVD releases==

Red Widow - The Complete 1st Season was released onto DVD on May 28, 2013 in Region 1. ==References==