For many years, Libby Gelman-Waxner, then an assistant buyer in juniors’ activewear, moonlighted for Premiere magazine and Entertainment Weekly as the world’s most beloved and irresponsible movie critic. Now she’s been coaxed out of retirement to make her mark in online criticism, at the urging of her close personal friend, the novelist and New Yorker contributor Paul Rudnick.

As a deputy associate in designer activewear at Amazon, specializing in distressed-denim-with-stretch, I keep my eye out for cultural trends. My new favorite genre is Rich White Women with Emotional Problems in Peril on Streaming Shows. Examples include Nicole Kidman as a successful romance novelist with a shady past in “The Perfect Couple,” Nicole Kidman as a beautiful therapist married to a questionable man in “The Undoing,” Nicole Kidman as an abused wife with beachfront property in “Big Little Lies,” and Nicole Kidman as a possibly unethical therapist in “Nine Perfect Strangers.” Kidman is fabulous in all of these projects, because she’s always impeccably dressed, deeply charismatic, and sometimes seems to change wigs in the middle of an onscreen conversation.

While Kidman rules the field, up-and-comers include Julianne Moore as a wealthy cult leader in “Sirens,” and Clare Danes, who’s played a tormented C.I.A. operative in “Homeland,” a tormented lesbian memoirist in “The Beast In Me,” and a tormented show-biz agent in the truly great “Fleischman Is in Trouble.” Danes is an extraordinary actress who welcomes the most visceral challenges and the most harrowing breakdowns—she’s the grittier Bette Davis to Kidman’s shimmering Joan Crawford.

Here are the rules of these shows: first of all, the leads must own a stunning second home in either a Hampton or on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, along with an expansive place in Manhattan. There must be many rooms in these residences, with Nancy Meyers-esque open-concept kitchens, bedrooms with tufted headboards, bathrooms the size of Pfizer laboratories with dressing areas, and, of course, wraparound decks and columned porches with stunning views of assorted oceans and harbors. It’s only possible to cope with a splintering marriage and ungrateful, cross-addicted children if there’s at least one cupola with a winding staircase, overlooking a pea-gravel drive with enough square footage for a fleet of BMWs. I don’t want to see anyone suffer in a studio apartment or even a colonial. In “The Watcher,” Naomi Watts, as a gifted ceramicist, is renovating her estate, which may be haunted, presumably by someone Martha Stewart beheaded because the topiaries were ragged.

Next, our leading ladies must have attracted the dreamiest if often corrupt husbands, played by the likes of Hugh Grant, Kevin Bacon, Bobby Cannavale, Liev Schreiber, and Alexander Skarsgård. These handsome galoots may cheat on their spouses or worse, but this allows the women to smolder in drifting chiffon. Their children are either troubled or spoiled, and remain largely interchangeable—they exist to not appreciate their stunning, tightly wound moms. (“You have plenty of time for your millions of followers, but not even five minutes for me!”) If a child is under ten years old, they will be coddled and protected from danger, like homeschooled Birkin bags. The women rarely have close friends, only rival hostesses and often down-market sisters. In “The Better Sister,” Jessica Biel reckons with the slutty, drunken Elizabeth Banks invading her Hamptons abode, while in “Sirens,” Julianne Moore copes with a pop-in by the slutty, drunken Meghann Fahy (one of her many staff members’ siblings). These bad girls serve as foils, waking up at 7 A.M. after blurting long-buried family secrets and passing out on the manicured lawn. Banks and Fahy are sensational, and both get to smoke even after they’ve been told not to because the smell might infest the chintz drapes in the breakfast room.

The plots of these shows usually center on a murder, which occurs not so much to end a human life as to inconvenience our star, who must postpone a brunch or a media event to conceal an inconvenient corpse. Bloody, mutilated bodies are often discovered as our heroines are returning alone, after midnight, from a museum fund-raiser, causing them to kneel in an evening gown to ascertain the victim’s identity, and then burn their now blood-stained Dior. During the next few days, they are forced to speak with various detectives, who are either jealous townies, grizzled veterans, or potential new love interests—I’m not sure why Dick Wolf hasn’t done a “Law & Order: Amagansett.”

Plot twists abound, abetted by wardrobe changes from riding attire to peignoirs, as the women receive mysterious, threatening texts from unknown sources, causing the actresses to attempt to furrow their unlined brows and snap at their nosy neighbors: “Abigail, I need you to go home now.” It’s understood that there’s nothing more difficult than being a successful editor, therapist, or author, even with a stash of pill bottles in a wicker basket beside an opulent floral arrangement. These modern-day warrior goddesses are being tested by lesser creatures, including personal assistants pressuring them to finalize dates for Paris or Ibiza (“where you can finally take some time for yourself”).

The final, climactic episode of each show will include past crimes exposed (“I was an escort—your mother was a paid escort!”), homicides avenged (“Did you really think you’d get away with strangling our child’s nanny once she’d rejected you?”), and scores settled (“Yes, detective, I shot my husband, and there’s not a jury in the world that’ll convict me—at least not a jury with any women on it.”). The conclusions can be glamorously ambiguous, as our dames stride from their shingle-style mansions and board hulking S.U.V.s, to ferry them to the ferry to the mainland, and from there to a private jet, for a future free of sneering spouses who’ve been suitably handcuffed.

You may be asking, “But, Libby, you’re an accomplished woman of Manhattan—do these stories represent your life?” Let me respond by saying that my life is exactly like these shows, only with crumpled bags of sweet-and-savory popcorn in every room, and me occasionally wearing stained sweatpants to retrieve FedEx boxes from my apartment-building lobby. I’m hopelessly addicted to these shows because they’re upscale soaps with A-list casts and art direction to die for. Plus, there’s usually a loyal housekeeper insisting, “You look so beautiful, Miss Catherine. Would you like me to stay late tonight? It’s no problem.” The rich folks are besieged by scandals and unwelcome trips to the local precinct, but the women are rarely guilty of anything other than poor judgment in third husbands, and they emerge vindicated, with their book sales intact. This is satisfying because in a real world gone genuinely mad, we need to keep our Oscar winners safe and well lit.

These shows are the current equivalent of what were once called “women’s pictures,” meaning tales with richly developed characters, complex story lines, and few intergalactic laser battles. (The warfare is limited to face-offs between younger mistresses and proud matriarchs in waterfront restaurants.) In other words, these programs offer actresses real opportunities as well as scenes in which they’re seated at their dressing tables putting on diamond earrings while coping with a situation involving a DNA test. I like to think that when Kidman or Danes encounter unknown callers on their phones that they hope it’s me, sending them memes of Emmy Awards in a new category called Best Waking Up with Hair Perfectly Arranged on the Pillow. Without these shows, I’d be left only with all those docudramas about serial killers, where nobody ever places crystal pitchers of freshly squeezed juice and platters of toast points on the quartz-topped kitchen island. ♦