Lipstick Jungle

Christian Science MonitorGloria Goodale

This is a high gloss, prime-time soap but it's a tad too earnest.

Chicago Sun-TimesDoug Elfman

t's not perfect. A few situations and lines are hyped-up "Sex and the City" moments, like when a distraught Lipsticker complains, "I need a cupcake." But if you can moan your way through such moments, the show gets more serious as it goes.

Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf Smith

Lipstick Jungle has some good things going for it, including actresses in roles that call for slightly more maturity than we're accustomed to, and juicy enough meanies to give it a little suspense.

SalonHeather Havrilesky

Lipstick Jungle is just as fluffy and soapy as you'd imagine a show based on a book by Candace Bushnell should be, it's still far smarter and more appealing than ABC's rich-and-powerful-lady fluff-fest "Cashmere Mafia."

New York PostLinda Stasi

All three actresses deserve better dialogue than they are given. But the clothes? They speak volumes.

San Jose Mercury NewsCharlie McCollum

What keeps Jungle from being laughably bad is Shields is so charming and Raver so intelligent in their roles that they carry scenes that should just keel over and die.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

I should probably feel bad, too, about finding all this silliness passably amusing, especially after having trashed its evil stepsister on ABC. But somehow I don't.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

Lipstick Jungle isn't that bad. It's more like "awww."; Not as in "Awww, isn't it cute?" but "Awww, little Candy didn't do as well this time as everybody hoped."

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

Lipstick Jungle apparently still isn't sure we get the point about bonding, because it goes out of its way to make it clear that even sympathetic male characters don't.

PopMattersCynthia Fuchs

The series has laid groundwork for minor and mostly predictable complications.

Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker

Lipstick Jungle is full of awful lines.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

Thoroughly average and unfailingly adequate, NBC's Lipstick Jungle is easier to like than ABC's cold, cynical "Cashmere Mafia," but that's like putting lipstick on a pig, albeit a pig dressed in couture.

VarietyBrian Lowry

The strongest and one redeeming storyline involves Raver.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

You're stuck with a dull mush that works neither as drama, comedy or camp trash.

Washington PostTom Shales

It's nearly a certainty that someone will call Lipstick Jungle, NBC's new drama series about sensual and successful women, a "guilty pleasure," but it's really more of a guilty horror.

Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara

Lipstick Jungle wrongheadedly wants to have it both ways--to celebrate and explore the lives and loves of women at the top through protagonists who don't have the drive or the depth to make it there.

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

What the obnoxious "Cashmere Mafia" and now the dull Lipstick Jungle suggest is that it's not as easy to recreate the "Sex and the City" phenomenon as assembling three or four attractive actresses of a certain age and pairing them with a name producer from the HBO show.

The New York TimesGinia Bellafante

Lipstick Jungle is a wooden clog of a melodrama squeezed into a flimsy, satin and marabou mule.

Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron

The show itself is so poorly conceived that you can only pity the viewer who gets lost in this Jungle.

LA WeeklyRobert Abele

Lipstick Jungle is a strangely dour affair--its shadowy, chilly depiction of New York fits right alongside the NBC house style of Law & Order--and is almost misshapen in its clunky blend of drama and comedy.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

Please say this is entertainment--and nothing more. That might not make it all right, but it would restore a whole lot of faith.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

No matter how horrible the clichés or gorgeous the gowns, they can't distract from the androphobic virulence at the heart of Lipstick Jungle.

TV GuideMatt Roush

Which "Sex and the City" knockoff is worse, ABC's "Cashmere Mafia" or NBC's Lipstick Jungle (based on Sex author Candace Bushnell's best-seller)? It really depends which one you're watching at the time. Both are simply dreadful, failing miserably at making their glamorously high-powered heroines sympathetic, credible or remotely interesting.

SlateTroy Patterson

It's all the same stuff--magazine parties, feckless husbands, tempting male bimbos...but without "Cashmere Mafia's" redeeming air of farce.

Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker

Better to wait for the big-screen movie of "Sex and the City," arriving May 30.

Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan

What do women want? Well, they don’t want another migraine-inducing soap opera about the lives of high-strung, whiny female executives in New York. I’m pretty sure of that.

NewsdayDiane Werts

NBC's superficial knockoff is just Lipstick on a pig.