'The Woman in the House Across the Street...' Reviews: The Good and Bad

The latest thriller miniseries from Netflix has for sure one of the lengthiest titles we've ever encountered in television history.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window centers on Anna (Kristen Bell), a heartbroken woman who is uncertain if she witnessed a murder. Since she often takes pills with red wine, Anna is prone to hallucinations; thus, did this killing actually happen?

As of now, The Woman in the House Across the Street... has mixed reviews from critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes consensus that reads, "If this sendup of literary potboilers suffers from being as glacially paced as its own whopper of a title, at least Kristen Bell makes for delightfully deadpan company."

To discover what went wrong with the show — which is a parody of popular psychological murder mysteries like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window — let's observe a few reviews to draw our own conclusion!

To lessen the blow for later on, we thought it'd be best to focus on the good aspects of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. Most critics have nothing but praise for Kristen Bell's performance, especially Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Bell plays it absolutely straight and down the middle, never winking at us throughout the increasingly insane proceedings, and in the process delivers one of the most impressive performances of her career as Anna, the lead character we always get in this type of juicy pulp nonsense," he wrote of the star in his review.

Kristen garners more acclaim from Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle, who deems it a "gloriously grave lead performance."

While this is great for the beloved actress, it's not too good for the series as a whole. Obviously, showrunners and producers rely on their cast to do most of the heavy lifting; however, if that's the only redeemable aspect of the project, something has clearly gone wrong.

If you're wondering what went wrong, here it is — most television critics who reviewed The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window stated that it's too long. Saloni Gajjar of AV Club notes that the series fails to humor its viewers and "often forgets it's a parody."

She added, "With eight half-hour episodes, the series drags out the suspense for double the length of the Amy Adams–led The Woman in the Window, the movie most directly referenced, but there’s no justification for the extra runtime."

Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter also argues that The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window struggles to nail its comedic edge, only humoring the audience during the first few moments of the finale.

However, he really ripped into the series afterward: "The rest of the finale isn’t as good, but there’s an amusing cameo in the closing minutes that sets up a second season I have no interest in watching, because let’s be clear: Other than the start of the finale, Woman is never mysterious in the slightest and only fitfully funny."

Well, there you have it — though Kristen Bell excels in her role as Anna, there's apparently nothing else that stands out in The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. According to critics, the parody aspect is forgotten, the laughs aren't landing, and the series is way too long.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.