All Her Fault

The show is built around strong feminist themes. It focuses on the double standards of parenting and how society blames women for every mistake. Nearly all the husbands are shown as lazy, abusive, or evil. The story ends with Marissa poisoning her husband and other women covering it up, valuing female sisterhood over the law.

The series heavily critiques the traditional nuclear family and modern marriage. It shows husbands as toxic manipulators who use weaponized incompetence to exploit their wives. Furthermore, the show criticizes the legal system when a male detective chooses to let Marissa get away with murder because her husband was so bad.

In the original novel by Andrea Mara, Peter's brother Brian did not have a disability. The TV show changed this character to be disabled so they could cast Daniel Monks. This is a clear, identity-driven change from the book to prioritize disabled representation on screen.

Some viewers online complained that the show was a preachy, anti-male feminist project. On places like Reddit, users criticized the series for making all white men look bad and useless. There was also backlash about the ending, which viewers felt went too far by justifying the murder of the husband.

The creative team has a mixed background with some strong feminist voices. Writer Phoebe Eclair-Powell has a history of writing plays with anti-patriarchal themes, and director Kate Dennis is known for feminist projects. However, the rest of the production team mostly works on standard dramas with no history of activism.