If anyone is mourning the unofficial “end” of summer now that Labor Day weekend is behind us, Netflix is doing us a favor. Its new series The perfect couplestarring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, is as much of a TV version of “beach reading” as a series can be, allowing viewers to extend their escape into sunny mindlessness just a little longer. (About as long as it takes to watch six twisty episodes in a row.)
Aside from its decidedly summery aesthetic—much of the action takes place poolside at a massive Nantucket beachfront mansion—the thriller series exudes a cozy familiarity that means you’ll watch with the unshakable suspicion that you’ve seen it before.
It is both lazy and still entirely appropriate to call The perfect couple a B-grade (or, let’s be honest, C-grade) attempt to replicate lightning in a bottle The White Lotus or Big little lies. The White Lotus Comparisons stem from the nature of the show, which is about “wildly rich, incredibly attractive people acting like total assholes during a holiday.” With Kidman in the lead role and the plot being a dark, mysterious tragedy, it’s tempting to The perfect couple an east coast version of Big little lies.
But considering that everything from the cast to the soap opera nature of the series is as if someone cut the pages from the scripts of those two series, mixed them together and then glued them together to make a new show, the best comparison, again given Kidman’s involvement, is perhaps HBO’s The downfallThis is a series that started with a lot of hype and the promise of another exciting thriller, but then went off the rails with increasingly outlandish twists and characters whose behavior made absolutely no sense.
Nicole Kidman as Greer Winbury and Liev Schreiber as Tag Winbury
SEACIA PAVAO/NETFLIX
This is the mood The perfect couple serves, but it is so confident in this disorder that you cannot resist being carried away by it.
Kidman plays Greer Garrison Winbury, a prolific author – hence the stunning Nantucket estate – and Schreiber is her stressed-out, pot-smoking husband, Tag. It’s the big wedding weekend of her son Benji (Billy Howle) to his beautiful bride-to-be Amelia (Eve Hewson), whose working-class status is hard to hide for everyone in the family. That family includes s–t-exciting Thomas (Jack Reynor) and his pregnant, smugly mean wife Abby (Dakota Fanning), and youngest son Will (Sam Nivola).
The wedding means that a diverse cast of characters join them on the island, including Amelia’s best friend and maid of honor Merritt (Meghann Fahy) and old family friend Shooter (Ishaan Khattar).
However, the lavish celebration is interrupted by a shocking tragedy, which I won’t give away because it’s the big twist of the first episode and I don’t have the patience to be yelled at for giving it away. However, it’s also the catalyst for the entire plot of the rest of the series, so I can’t write much more about the show without giving it away. But suffice it to say, the big event opens a Pandora’s box of family secrets, and no one is particularly happy about it.
Dakota Fanning as Abby Winbury, Jack Reynor as Thomas Winbury, Eve Hewson as Amelia Sacks, Billy Howle as Benji Winbury and Meghann Fahy as Merritt Monaco
Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Netflix
Watch out The perfect couple is an interesting experience because you can’t help but think the whole time: “This is rubbish.” But it is intensive Trash, which, together with a cast full of stars who are far too good for this material, elevates the series to a level where you don’t have to be ashamed to watch it.
Did I enjoy watching the film? I was constantly baffled. I found the ridiculousness of some of the twists and the cast’s persistent attempts to sell them amusing. I really wanted to go to Nantucket and now I have to figure out how to afford it. And I wondered how many Nicole Kidmans there are on this earth or if she’s got some kind of time machine that we don’t have access to. How is it possible to do as many projects a year as she does? And why, despite being so busy, does she choose to star in a mediocre TV series like this one?
Nonetheless, The perfect couple is, like a beach read, a guarantee. As soon as you press play on this series, you know what you’re going to get. And if you limit yourself to those expectations, it’s hard to imagine you’ll have a bad time.
