Netflix just got the best soapy drama for mess lovers

January is a “try hard” month. The year has turned and many people are trying to make changes – if not full-fledged resolutions, then at least a dream, a goal to try to lean towards. I think it’s a good time to take on a TV project. (Watch historical television! Cross off that one show you’ve always meant to do!) But on those days when the ordeal has become too much, you need something powerful and driving to sink into. Enter Youngerspecifically for Netflix’s catalog.

Younger is a perfect soapy watch for several reasons: It is long-lasting. It has short, punchy episodes that almost always end with a dangling promise of what’s to come. It has a love triangle that gets tossed around like vegetables being fried in a wok. But perhaps most notably, it’s because Younger is a show where the premise matters very – right up until when it doesn’t.

The show follows Liza (Sutton Foster), a newly divorced, former stay-at-home mom trying to get her career back on track after 15 years away. Finding herself shut out of all entry-level jobs in the publishing industry, she decides on a white lie: Change her resume to look like she’s 26 (which means ditching the AOL email address).

Younger goes out of her way to make it clear that she’s doing this out of desperation – you can only almost be called old in an interview so many times before turning to audacity – and viewers should use their own discretion when lying about a job application. And technically a lot of Younger completely turns on the central lie of the series. But as the series grows, it becomes tangled with relationships, entanglements, thinly veiled publishing gossip and hijinks.

You can trace the different lives Younger from the various posters of the season: Liza kisses a boy; Liza goes with her friends; Liza and Kelsey (Hilary Duff), a friend and colleague at the publishing house; Liza turns around in a glamorous dress or just to press her finger over her lips to keep her secret. It’s less the evolution of the show than it is a window into its many facets. Given the show’s ensemble cast, there are many people who get swept up in her ruse. As you might expect, there are different levels of hiding and discovering that Liza has to jump through as both her career and the series progress. But Younger‘s gift is that while her lie is the show’s hook, it’s not all the show is. Like any 40-year-old who somehow manages to make it to 26, it holds volumes and a remarkable ability to attract dilemmas.

At its heart, it’s more of a publisher’s dramedy soap. Like Liza and co. jumping between new relationships and publishing conundrums, Younger is tempting in the way it weaves its web of lies and love. And every step is at once exhilarating and chaotic. The show feels like the right kind of trashy: shiny and always driving forward at the next complication. In a month where we all feel like we’re steering out of skates and avoiding the cold, Younger is the perfect marathon to keep you warm – you just have to love clutter.

Younger now streaming on Netflix.