Red Widow

2013 • ABC
3.8
484 reviews
TV-14
Rating
Eligible
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Season 1 episodes (8)

1 Pilot
3/3/13
Marta's loving husband is brutally murdered.
2 The Contact
3/3/13
Crime boss Nicholae Schiller tells Marta she must import drugs.
3 The Consignment
3/10/13
Crucial details of Marta's illegal drug shipment change at the last minute.
4 The Escape
3/17/13
Mike stages a robbery of his own house in hope of paying off his debts.
5 The Recorder
3/24/13
Marta wears a wire to a meeting with Schiller in hope of building a case.
6 The Captive
3/31/13
Marta fears the worst when Natalie goes missing.
7 The Coke
4/28/13
Marta learns new information about Natalie's kidnapper and her husband's murder.
8 The Hit
5/5/13
Convinced that Schiller murdered her husband, Marta asks for help with a revenge plot.

About this show

Marta Walraven seems to have an idyllic life. A stay-at-home mom in tony Marin County, just north of San Francisco, she is devoted to her three children and her husband. Behind this perfect façade, however, is a more complicated story: Evan, Marta's husband, supports the family by exporting marijuana. Marta is familiar with the world of organized crime: her father, Andrei Petrov, and his loyal bodyguard, Luther, are Bratva -- Russian gangsters -- in San Francisco. It's a world from which she and her sister Kat always wanted to escape, though they never quite did.

But when Evan is brutally murdered in their driveway, everything changes. Marta's first concern is to protect her children -- and yet when FBI Agent James Ramos promises Marta justice in exchange for her cooperation, she cannot go against the Bratva code. She refuses his help.

Slowly, the truth about her husband's murder begins to emerge: Evan's business partners -- Marta's scheming brother, Irwin Petrov, and their best friend, the hapless Mike Tomlin -- were involved in the theft of millions of dollars of cocaine from the formidable international crime boss, Nicholae Schiller. Evan paid with his life, but as far as Schiller is concerned, his debt is not clear. It falls to Marta, as Evan's widow, to navigate the criminal underworld in order to repay this debt -- in whatever way Schiller sees fit.

Hounded by the FBI on the one hand and by Schiller on the other, while also trying to raise three grieving kids on her own, Marta discovers a tenacity she never knew she had. As she hunts for the truth about her husband's death and struggles to keep her children safe, she'll rely on her resourcefulness, determination and her Bratva DNA like never before. But just how far is Marta willing to go in order to beat her adversaries at their own deadly game?

Ratings and reviews

3.8
484 reviews
A Google user
February 23, 2013
ABC released the first episode on Hulu Plus two weeks prior to the 3/4/13 premiere. Rather than posting negative reviews here because the show is not yet available in Google Play, you could watch now on Hulu or do the mature thing and hold your comments until the show has aired. To that end, this is among the best hour long drama pilots I've seen on any broadcast networks in quite some time. It looks and feels like nothing else on US television. Perhaps that's because its based on a Dutch series and producers wisely decided to not water it down in translation. The show is stark, haunting and well cast with actors who look like real people. Plot wise, its like WEEDS minus the humor and with cocaine and Russian-American crime families in the SF Bay Area subbing in for pot and Nancy Botwin and company in SoCal. The first hour is deliberately paced but its a slow burn that draws you in.
16 people found this review helpful
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Phil Wise
February 26, 2013
They need to stop advertising these tv shows, that have free episodes, on the mobile Google play store when you can't "buy" them or watch them. Its ridiculous. And no, rating this down will not get the show canceled, a bad show gets canceled. Which after watching this on my tv... this is a bad show. Its like they ran out of ideas. Or at least ideas that don't make you cringe in agony.
8 people found this review helpful
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Lil Poetboy
April 16, 2013
I really love this show. It tries to take itself seriously, but there are a few moments your're thinking to yourself " WTF Marta!" But it doesn't go far enough, I can see what others are saying, the mob world that Martha got thrown into may in turn make her a better mobster in the end; but I don't have any hope for a season 2, and I'm pretty sure, after 6 episodes in, and 2 left to go that there will be any plot tie ups.But I could be wrong.
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