Are we tired of watching rich people be terrible to each other? It certainly doesn’t seem that way, given how many shows there have been in this genre in the past few years. There’s no shortage of novels that involve wealthy families whose perfect facades are cracked by some sort of event, usually one that’s violent. A new series on Netflix, based on a Elin Hilderbrand novel, is about just such a scenario.
THE PERFECT COUPLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Beach scenes on Nantucket.
The Gist: We see scenes from the rehearsal dinner for Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) and Benji Winbury (Billy Howle). Benji comes from an old-money Nantucket family; his very control-oriented mother, Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman) married into it almost 30 years ago when she wed Benji’s father Tag (Liev Schreiber).
Everyone looks happy at the rehearsal dinner, from Amelia’s bestie and maid of honor Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), to Greer and Tag, to Benji’s best man, Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khattar). Well, Benji’s older brother Thomas (Jack Reynor) seems miserable, but he might be under a bit of pressure because his wife Abby (Dakota Fanning) is pregnant and wants them to move to a much more expensive apartment. And he’s miserable because he’s an a-hole.
The next morning, a scream peals out over the beach, and Summerland police chief Dan Carter (Michael Beach) gets a call about a “floater” on the water, i.e. a body has washed up. It’s definitely someone from the wedding party, as he informs his cater waiter daughter Chloe (Mia Isaac) that the ceremony is cancelled.
Carter and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin), sent by the DA’s office to assist in the investigation, start questioning all of the non-relatives, including Abby, catty wedding planner Roger Pelton (Tim Bagley), flirtatious family friend Isabel Nallet (Isabelle Adjani) and house manager Gosia (Irina Dubova). Amelia, who found the body while wearing her wedding dress, is brought in for questioning, but is too traumatized to say anything.
They don’t paint a pretty picture. Greer, a famous novelist, mistrusts Amelia, a free-spirited and down-to-earth zoologist who works at the Central Park Zoo. Her “perfect couple” marriage to Tag isn’t as perfect as it seems. For his part, Tag is a huge pothead who hasn’t seemed to do much to maintain his family’s fortune. Youngest son Will (Sam Nivola) gets some welcomed but unwanted attention from Merritt. Thomas feels financially squeezed and goes to his father for help.
And things aren’t all great with Amelia and Benji, as Amelia admits to Merritt that while she loves Benji, she doesn’t burn as hot for him as she wants to. Merritt ascribes the feelings to cold feet, but Amelia’s actions with Benji in bed indicate otherwise.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Jenna Lamia and based on the book by Elin Hilderbrand, The Perfect Couple has shades of plenty of other recent rich-people-being-awful shows — some of which starred Kidman. You know which ones we’re talking about: The White Lotus, Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Apples Never Fall, Expats, etc.
Our Take: The first episode of The Perfect Couple, directed by Susanne Bier, is a beautifully-shot mess. Lamia and Bier purposefully keep the identity of whose body was found until the end of the episode, and the tired narrative-building method of having story be built via flashbacks and people talking to the police doesn’t yield a ton of clues. Even so, we nailed just who the body was about 2/3 of the way through the episode, because we realized exactly who wasn’t shown being interviewed by the cops.
It’s a frustrating storytelling method because, even though a lot of the story is being told in flashback, it didn’t really seem all that necessary to hide whose body it was. Sure, it makes for twist at the end, but the series is more about the murder and the family secrets it reveals more than anything else.
What we’re also tired of seeing is a wealthy white family swanning through their well-appointed homes doing everything they can to hide the roiling trauma underneath the perfect facade. It feels like being the matriarch of these kinds of families has become Kidman’s stock-and-trade of late, and while her accent may change, she plays all the roles with the same pained expression and barely-controlled despair. And whoever plays her husband generally has none of the raw emotional power that the actor usually has; this is one of the most passive roles we’ve seen Schreiber play in ages.
But there are aspects of the first episode that give us hope. For one, it has a sense of humor that other shows of this type — except for maybe The White Lotus — just don’t have. If we’re going to examine the cracks under the surface of yet another rich family, at least we can get some laughs out of it, right?
For two, we like Dakota Fanning as the deceptively cunning Abby. But we’re really intrigued by Hewson as Amelia. Sure, Hewson has wowed before, in shows like Bad Sisters and Behind Her Eyes. But here, she’s the audience’s representative into the horror that is the Winburys’ existence. Despite Hewson’s background (she’s Bono’s daughter, after all), she seems to bring an earthy vibe to her roles that help the audience connect with her. We see that here, and we want to watch more of her interacting with her awful in-laws for the duration of the series.
Sex and Skin: A scene where Amelia and Benji try to have sex the day of the rehearsal party tells you all you need to know about how truly she is attracted to him.
Parting Shot: We see whose body Amelia found, as she kneels over it and screams while in her wedding dress.
Sleeper Star: Jack Reynor is an A-1 a-hole as Thomas.
Most Pilot-y Line: Gosia complains to the cops that Amelia washes her own dishes, which she calls “rude.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. The only reasons we’re recommending The Perfect Couple are Hewson, Fanning, and our fervent hope that the series continues to be more irreverent than most shows in this annoyingly persistent genre.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.