Our appetite for disgustingly rich people behaving disgustingly never seems to wane. The Perfect Couple (Netflix), a big budget adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel, helps to explain why: it’s magisterial schlock. If you watched Succession not for the humour but for the turpitude, this will be right up your alley.
Even recounting the synopsis makes me feel dirty, but here goes: Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) is about to marry into one of the wealthiest families on Nantucket. Her furiously disapproving future mother-in-law, famous novelist Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman), is the sort of woman who will invest a seven-figure budget on a wedding, and as such this one is set to be the event of the season – until a body turns up on the beach. Everyone in the family is a suspect. Even though no one in the family seems that bothered that someone has actually died on their property.
We could waste time analogising – it’s Big Little Lies on the East Coast; it’s The White Lotus via The Count of Monte Cristo but in Nantucket; it’s And Then There Were None but with private jets – but the writers of The Perfect Couple haven’t wasted any time covering their tracks.
Every cliché of the mega-bucks mystery thriller is here, from the title onwards. (Guess what – none of the couples actually are perfect, in fact they all hate each other!) The repellant rich people are offset with sensible, homely police (even if one of the police is beautifully played by Donna Lynne Champlin, channelling her best Mare of Easttown). The writers also haven’t troubled themselves too much with a nuanced plot or believable characters.