The opening credits for The Perfect Couple are fun and cute. As Meghan Trainor’s “Criminals” plays, the cast of Netflix’s new limited series – from the police officers to the housekeeper to Nicole Kidman herself – perform a coordinated wedding dance on the beach. It’s the kind of clichéd bit one expects to see at a real wedding, and there’s something gleeful about watching this deep bench of stars and character actors shimmy and point their way through the routine.
It’s also tonally off-putting, though. The Perfect Couple is a soapy melodrama, but it’s also a murder mystery. By the end of the first episode one of these characters is dead, so while it makes perfect sense to open the series with this extravagant display of wealth, in subsequent episodes, including the killer-revealing sixth episode, the cute opening feels like it belongs on another show.
Created by Jenna Lamia, and based on the best-selling novel by Elin Hilderbrand, The Perfect Couple is Netflix’s attempt to do The White Lotus. Not only does the series feature rich people doing abhorrent things, it even goes so far as to cast Meghann Fahy, who appeared in S02 of the Mike White HBO show, which not-coincidentally also featured a drowning as its season-long mystery.
All six episodes of the limited series are directed by Susanne Bier, who previously worked with the streamer on 2018’s Birdbox. The Perfect Couple is another soft-genre text fronted by an A-list Hollywood starlet; here Bier has swapped out Sandra Bullock for Nicole Kidman (who is allowed to use her Aussie accent for a change).
The plot is as follows: working class girl Amelia (Eve Hewson) is due to marry Benji (Billy Howle), the middle son of the extremely wealthy Winbury family. It’s a high society affair, presided over by matriarchal writer Greer (Kidman) and her husband Tag (Liev Schreiber), who have been “the perfect couple” for 20+ years.
Obviously, since it’s a murder mystery soap, the Winbury family – which also consists of troubled younger brother Will (Sam Nivola), asshole older brother Tom (Jack Reynor), and his bitchy pregnant wife Abby (Dakota Fanning) – is only functional on the surface. In reality, they’re all backstabbing liars desperate to protect their secrets, which include drug dependency, ties to criminal organizations, bankruptcy, and adultery.
It’s pretty standard fare, elevated by the gorgeous production design and the incredibly attractive cast of actors who dig into their saucy, sordid roles with glee. The show was shot on location in Nantucket, so there’s an undeniable sense of extravagance and escapism in the picturesque aerial shots of the Winbury mansion, the beach and the water.
Unsurprisingly the rot lurking beneath the opulence is framed as a kind of moral decay: despite their wealth, none of these people are happy. Even when they are confronted with the harsh reality of death, their wealth affords them the ability to bitch callously about how the murder has impacted a) the wedding, b) a People magazine photo shoot, and c) Greer’s latest book launch.
Back to the death. In true The White Lotus fashion, the series hides the identity of the victim until the second episode and relies heavily on a non-linear structure filled with flashbacks. Naturally everyone has a motive, up to and including the housekeeper Gosia (Irina Dubova) and Isabel Nallet (Isabelle Adjani), the opinionated French friend of the family that no one seems to truly like.
None of the motivations are particularly complicated, but that’s hardly the point. The Perfect Couple has no interest in upending the formula of these shows or even aspiring to compete with the best iterations, such as the aforementioned The White Lotus or Kidman’s own Big Little Lies. This is soapy, frivolous escapism; it’s Dollar Tree HBO drama with a cast that jumped at the opportunity to spend a few weeks in fancy clothes on Nantucket.
Kidman is the main attraction, though in the first half of the season she’s more of a supporting character. Greer is a tried-and-true Kidman archetype: the matriarch is extremely controlling, frigid on the surface, and obsessed with optics and the family’s reputation. This makes sense given that she’s also the family’s golden goose: Greer keeps the household afloat financially by churning out airport mystery novels.
Schreiber’s Tag, on the other hand, is freer and looser. Outfitted exclusively in skin tone linens and prone to drinking heavily and smoking joints, Tag enjoys failed relationships with two of his three sons (Tom and Will), but has a warm comradery with women who aren’t his wife.
Benji and Amelia are the “nice” central characters, which in this kind of text is code for boring (Howle also has very little control of his British accent, which proves distracting). Hewson fares better in the early episodes; the poor girl marrying into the rich family makes her an obvious audience surrogate, but as the series progresses, her initial impressive investigative scenes are replaced by an uninspired romantic subplot.
Everyone is outdone by Kidman’s cruel observations and Fanning’s pregnant Abby, who delights in delivering cutting remarks and bitchy quips. Adjani is playing a similar character, but Isabel is too on the margins and Adjani seems uncomfortable delivering dialogue. The other MVP is Fahy as Merritt, Amelia’s bridesmaid and best friend whose initial party girl personality is quickly revealed to mask a vulnerable emotional side.
The biggest issue for The Perfect Couple, aside from its sprawling cast and innumerable subplots, is that it is far more interested in the soapy melodramatics than its murder mystery plot. This would be fine if the show simply focused on the lifestyles of the rich and the terrible and didn’t try to pretend that anyone cared about the murder.
Alas, this is not the case. Although the police – played by Michael Beach and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Donna Lynne Champlin – get plenty of screentime and have amusing banter, the scenes of their police interviews go on forever, particularly in the last few episodes when every member of the Dunbury clan are called in for extended interrogations.
Then there’s the fact that the richest family on the island rarely consults their PR team and never involve their lawyers, even when they are being questioned for murder. It’s the series’ biggest unintentional joke and it doesn’t just strain credulity; it breaks it.
Which brings us back to the opening credits: the coordinated wedding dance on the beach. By the end of the series, this sequence has come to embody both the pros and cons of the show.
On the pro side: it’s light and breezy escapist fun, filled to the brim with great actors and beautiful beach vibes.
On the con side: it makes no sense. Not only would several of these characters never consent to learn such a routine, but why are the police and the staff there? Why are they doing a dance in their formal wedding attire when the wedding never happened?
Obviously, I’m overthinking what is clearly meant to be an entertaining bit, but the credits are a microcosm of the whole show. On the surface, the dance – and by extension The Perfect Couple – is breezy, soapy, and entertaining. Upon closer examination, however, it’s too busy, it’s not well-plotted, and a bunch of it doesn’t quite add up.
And that’s “Criminal” baby.
All six episodes of The Perfect Couple are now streaming on Netflix.