Beautiful Liars

June 23, 2008
In the air-kiss light latest from Adams (Ex-Girlfriends
), the launch of New York daily TV talk show The Beehive
sets its two female hosts—50-year-old veteran Sutton Lancaster and vibrant young Emma Ronson—on a collision course. A snide gossip column pinpoints their on- and off-set hostility, along with the missteps of their fellow regulars: Simone Williams, a black former model with maxed-out credit cards and a stalker problem, and witty, gay trust-fund baby Finn Robards, who's got the hots for straight pal Dean Paul Lockhart, for whom Emma, too, nurses an unrequited passion. (For now, Emma's sleeping with Sutton's aging ex-boyfriend.) Soon Sutton takes up with a gold-digging bartender half her age, while shopaholic Simone stoops to an in-person appearance at Target in a futile attempt to stave off her creditors. The stew of romantic and financial cross-purposes bubbles along merrily, spiced by the producers' fixation on ever-changing approval numbers and up-to-the-minute pop culture references. Although the characters' obsessions stretch thin toward the end, and their transformations occur too abruptly to be truly satisfying, there's little to spoil the deliciously bitchy fun.