“Wholesome” is hardly the first word that comes to mind when you think of Bravo reality TV. But in a world of housewives bickering over cocktails, Below Deck shipmates slipping into each other’s cabins, and Tom Sandoval blowing up his life on Vanderpump Rules, ’90s icon Denise Richards is here to offer something different.
Instead of aping the Housewives franchise—where she was once a cast member—her new comedic half-hour docuseries, Denise Richards & Her Wild Things, which premieres March 4, pulls from the Keeping Up With the Kardashians playbook with its funny, frank, fantastically vapid look at what it’s like to be a famous family living in LA.
That starts with a life that’s supremely unrelatable. At one point the former Bond Girl attends a high-intensity workout session because her usual Pilates trainer is at a retreat in the Cayman Islands. In a talking head, she explains that she no longer lives in the house she owns because she “needed some space” after her in-laws came to stay for a few months and never left. Now she lives out of three rented townhomes instead.
Yet there’s something about Richards that’s hilariously self-aware and weirdly down to earth too, like that one coworker at your restaurant job who rolls in haggard from a night of clubbing but works her shift without missing a beat. As Richards empathizes with the grown-up daughter she shares with ex Charlie Sheen, “I get it. You have a lot of explaining to do with your friends [about] both your parents… That’s why we have a show!”
It’s the same no-frills candor that made Richards a breath of fresh air—and, eventually, a source of drama—during her two-year run on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Fans have speculated that Richards exited the show because she wanted more control over how she was portrayed on camera. She’s certainly got that in Wild Things, a much sunnier series that was originally destined for E! (where Richards formerly had a 2008 reality show called Denise Richards: It’s Complicated) before some behind-the-scenes corporate shifts swapped it to Bravo—sorry, “Bravo, Bravo, f---king Bravo!”—at the last minute.
Though some Housewives favorites are set to stop by the series, including Camille Grammer, Kathy Hilton, and Richards’ onetime nemesis Erika Jayne, the E! sheen makes Wild Things just about the lowest-stakes TV show that could possibly exist, at least in the one episode provided to press ahead of the premiere.
The biggest conflict is whether Richards can pull together a family barbeque despite Malibu’s strict restrictions on plastic. (Cue Richards: “I grew up in Illinois—you could bring whatever the fuck you wanted to a picnic.”) At one point the show resorts to putting an “Excitement Meter” on screen to count the number of times she says she’s “so excited” to bring home her three new golden retrievers.
While there is some genuine drama between Richards’ two oldest daughters, Sami and Lola, who’ve had a falling-out over an ex-boyfriend, the girls are so passive and boring it’s hard to care. The best moment is when one daughter chides, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if you weren’t such a b---h, dude,” to which Richards immediately deadpans, “Don’t call her ‘dude,’ she’s your sister.”
Indeed, the biggest problem with the series is that its supporting players, including Richards’ husband Aaron Phypers, don’t pop nearly as much as she does. Wild Things pretty much lives and dies by Richards’ charisma, so it’s a good thing she’s got plenty to spare. Whether for image rehab reasons or genuine ones, she’s also portrayed as someone with a huge sense of empathy, which is the quality that fuels the show’s wholesome vibes.
Richards may joke about Sheen, but she also makes a point to invite his other ex-wife to the family picnic to ensure all the siblings can be in each other’s lives.
The premiere opens with Richards training her golden retrievers as potential service dogs for her 13-year-old daughter Eloise, who has developmental delays due to a chromosomal deletion and who Richards calls “the bright light” of her family. Maybe the most memorable exchange is when Richards proudly supports the OnlyFans career of her 20-year-old daughter, Sami. In fact, Sami’s main complaint is that her mom is so supportive she started her own OnlyFans page too—très embarrassing in the tasteful-nudes space.
All of which makes Richards a winning protagonist for a deeply inessential but also weirdly charming series. Wild Things may be glossy, but Richards has clearly seen some shit during her decades in Hollywood. Subtextually, that gives the series heft even if it exists in the fizziest of reality TV realms.
