INSATIABLE
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: This new Netflix series has been slammed more than almost any series in the streaming service’s history, accusing the dark comedy of fat-shaming and a litany of other major and minor sins. But actually, it plays like a sort of young-adult Desperate Housewives, with both its outrage and its character parodies spread in all directions. (There weren't a lot of proper role models there, either. Just a few models.) Debby Ryan plays a former fat girl who, after becoming thin and treated much differently by those around her, sets out on a course of mostly comic, sometimes serious revenge. Most of the critics upset about this series object to that premise in itself – but it’s been done for decades, literally, and sometimes to hilarious effect. Joan Rivers wrote a TV-movie in 1973, starring Stockard Channing as an ugly duckling turned vengeful swan, called The Girl Most Likely to… -- and in 1986, Julie T. Wallace and Patricia Hodge shared the role in the brilliant miniseries version (not the inferior subsequent movie) called The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. Ryan is good in Insatiable, and former Good Wife recurring player Dallas Roberts is even better, in a series that also provides against-type roles for Christopher Gorham, Alyssa Milano, and especially Robin Tunney. Insatiable isn’t great – but it isn’t an affront to television or humanity, either.