Review
THE DUCHESS: A Case of Feminism and Girlpower Gone Wrong
Watching the short six-episode season of The Duchess is best treated as a case study in feminism gone wrong, however some of Katherine’s jokes do hit home.
On Netflix, Queen Elizabeth (The Crown) reigns supreme, but a woman has appeared who wants to dethrone her. The self-proclaimed The Duchess: uncompromising artist, mother, not a wife, but certainly a lover. Will living by her own rules be enough to bring her success?
The show’s creator and star, Katherine Ryan, may strike some female viewers as the ideal modern woman—an embodiment of self-confidence, romanticism, wit, and just enough arrogance to get through life’s hardest knocks. And she has had her share of those—hinted at here and there are money troubles growing up, and a less-than-glamorous start to motherhood.
A casual hookup in a club’s back room with washed-up boyband star Shep (Rory Keenan) gave her a daughter—the most important person in her life, but also a constant source of stress about parenting and making enough money to sustain their lifestyle.
The series begins at a moment when Katherine seems to have survived her battles with life. Her business brings in good money, she has a smart daughter and a loyal best friend, and she’s dating a reliable man: Evan, a dentist who bends over backward to give her everything.
He accepts being part-time, doesn’t burden her with his problems, and shows up once a week for sex—what more could she want? Especially since Katherine refuses to sacrifice her independence for anyone. She says what she wants, does what she wants, and won’t change to meet anyone’s expectations.
The comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag are obvious. The Duchess is another story about a modern woman in a big city, pieced together from the expected tropes of the genre: exes, machete-sharp one-liners, and a few general reflections on contemporary life. But while Fleabag was fresh, layered, and full of surprises (who could forget the sexy priest?), The Duchess feels more like ticking boxes: a soulless celebration of individuality over any universal values, stripped of wit or empathy.
Evan is the one intriguing twist—a male character lifted straight out of a rom-com but gender-flipped to support Katherine. Yet ultimately everything exists to justify her behavior, as if the fact that she just wants to live on her own terms excuses all. Fleabag’s cynicism and despair were rooted in a painful past; Pamela Adlon in Better Things carefully constructed the portrait of a single mother and struggling actress. But Katherine in The Duchess is written straight out of slogans from Cosmopolitan.
Of course, art can present all kinds of personalities—that’s not in dispute. But what matters is how they’re portrayed. And here, the camera is always on Katherine’s side. Even when she uses men or lies to her daughter, the story still wraps up with a romantic comedy happy ending.
A warped sense of #girlpower reduces men to stereotypes and little more.
In this way, The Duchess plays like a female version of Californication. Romanticizing sleazy womanizers is (thankfully) on its way out, but now the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme: creators dress up vulgar, crass behavior in the language of emancipation. Maybe the word pussy on a sweatshirt shocks a few viewers, but that’s cheap provocation. And finding it funny when leaked nude photos are used to ruin another woman’s marriage? That’s just mean-spirited.
Which is why watching the short six-episode season of The Duchess is best treated as a case study in feminism gone wrong. Some of Katherine’s jokes do hit home, but overall Ryan’s series is a letdown. If the ultimate message is that individuality justifies trampling over everyone else—then this is not a culture worth celebrating.
