Who are the perfect couple? Could it be the domineering matriarch and her philandering husband? The lovestruck groom and his indifferent bride-to-be? The pregnant social climber and her loudmouth, destructive partner? The irony of Netflix’s new six-part drama, The Perfect Couple, is that, for all the beachfront properties, the designer dresses, and wedding cakes that could feed a small army, perfection is nowhere to be found.
Greer (Nicole Kidman) and Tag (Liev Schreiber) Winbury are the toast of Nantucket. She’s a successful crime author; he’s her affable, toke-toting husband. Their middle son Benji (Billy Howle) is marrying a beautiful but truculent outsider, Amelia (Eve Hewson), which brings the whole family, and assorted hangers-on, to the island. Among that coterie is Amelia’s maid of honour Merritt (Meghann Fahy) and mysterious family friend Isabel (Isabelle Adjani). But the wedding of the year hits the rocks when a body – one of the party – washes up on the beach. And there’s nothing like a corpse for, firstly, ruining your big day, and, secondly, exposing old secrets.
Based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand – proclaimed as “the queen of beach reads” – The Perfect Couple is a deceptively schlocky beast. The star wattage of the cast, and their creative bona fides, should be taken with a pinch of salt: this is a neat shot of unadulterated naffness. “I love this woman,” Benji’s wedding speech declares, “to death.” You can almost hear the “dun dun duuun!” after this sort of ominous pronouncement. But writer Jenna Lamia (whose most recent writing credits were on the dismal Resident Evil reboot) seems unconcerned. After all, The Perfect Couple was a book written to be inhaled at a Cabo poolside, geared up on piña coladas – and its TV adaptation is going to be consumed by hungover commuters on packed trains.
Beach reads rely on a simple formula – archetypal characters and a series of stock narratives – but TV is no more original. If the premise of The Perfect Couple sounds reminiscent of Big Little Lies (Monterey out, Nantucket in) or Nine Perfect Strangers or The White Lotus, that’s because it’s a transparently cynical rip-off. The fact that two of those three source projects also star Kidman demonstrates the Oscar winner’s willingness to dive headfirst into this splashy streaming fare. Kidman’s ice queen may be front and centre of the marketing material, but it is Hewson and Fahy (off the back of star turns in Bad Sisters and – you guessed it – The White Lotus) who carry the drama of The Perfect Couple. In a story about a rich family (how rich? “Kill someone and get away with it rich,” says the wedding planner – dun dun duuun!), they offer some grounding, something further from caricature.
But, overall, it is as daft as it is derivative. The lifestyle pornography of Big Little Lies is given the Netflix treatment – with bolder colours and catalogue lighting – making Nantucket feel slightly less aspirational than it might. It is a series that doesn’t sit well with silences or slow character development, and the frenzied pace makes the non-linear timeline feel a bit scrambled. Are we pre-death or post-death? Those watching on a six-inch iPhone screen might feel themselves losing track. A Bollywood-style choreographed credits dance is, by far, the most fun part of the show – but it feels incongruous in a work that otherwise eschews leaning into its own silliness. Even Kidman yelling “There are oysters at the gate!”, like she’s defending the walls of Rome, doesn’t fully commit to the absurdity of the premise. It makes The Perfect Couple feel half-hearted where it could easily have been a more biting satire.
And don’t let the presence of Academy Award-winning Danish director Susanne Bier mislead you: The Perfect Couple is by-the-numbers Netflix pulp. In its lack of originality, it invites comparison with Big Little Lies, but absent the tension and intrigue of that drama, we’re left with something as superficial and unfulfilled as the family it depicts. Imperfect lives, imperfectly depicted.
‘The Perfect Couple’ is on Netflix