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The most unexpected thing about The Perfect Couple — the new murder mystery mini-series on Netflix — isn’t that it ends with a Farah Khan-style song-and-dance sequence, or that it has probably put Bono’s daughter within one degree of separation from Shahid Kapoor. What’s really going to take audiences by surprise is the show’s failure to pass the objectively low bar for this kind of entertainment, which is often marked by shallow plotting, underwritten characters, and unearned twists. The Perfect Couple is the kind of show in which the acting is a fraction over-the-top, and respect for the audience’s intelligence noticeably low.
Borrowing both the structure and tone of HBO’s Big Little Lies with an audacity that warrants a call to the plagiarism police, the six-episode show features Nicole Kidman as Greer Garrison Winbury, a celebrated mystery writer whose entire life comes undone when a murder is committed at her son’s wedding. Greer is married to the obscenely wealthy Tag Winbury, played by Liev Schreiber. They have three sons in all, the eldest of whom, played by Jack Reynor, is expecting a child with his wife, played by Dakota Fanning. None of them, however, is the protagonist of the show.
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That honour goes to Amelia Sacks, the middle-class bride who is caught like a fish out of water in the sprawling Nantucket mansion of the Winburys, who are prophetically described in the first episode as being so rich that they could ‘kill someone and get away with it’. Played by Eve Hewson, Amelia is only a day away from getting married to Greer and Tag’s second son, Benji, when one of the guests is found murdered on the beach. The police are summoned, and a tough detective played by Donna Lynne Champlin takes over the investigation, determined to expose the skeletons in these characters’ (walk-in) closets.
Directed by Susanne Bier, who previously helmed The Night Manager and The Undoing, The Perfect Couple is frothy to a fault. Shows like Big Little Lies and The White Lotus offered a tongue-in-cheek takedown of wealth and privilege, but this one borders on the farcical. The harebrained climax aside, everything leading up to it is marked by a disappointing disconnect between the thin scripts and Bier’s plain direction. Greer and Tag are trapped in a marriage of convenience; she’s more concerned about maintaining her pristine image than anything else, which is why she goes into crisis management mode immediately after the murder. The wedding, of course, is immediately called off, but none of the characters is allowed to leave because they also happen to be the prime suspects.
Amelia, who functions as a version of the Ana de Armas character from Knives Out, slowly begins to get accustomed to Greer and Tag’s ways, and also grows to realise that they don’t really like her. But before she can fully wrap her head around this very uncomfortable situation — Benji is inherently sympathetic to his family — the show launches her into the next plot beat. The viewing experience is made all the more disjointed by the writers’ ill-conceived decision to mimic the non-linear structure of Big Little Lies, complete with an interrogation room framing device that yanks you back and forth between timelines, neither of which are particularly entertaining.
It’s difficult to root for any of these people, including Amelia. It’s not that she’s a terrible person like the others; it’s just that she’s too plain to have any sort of feelings towards. Ishaan Khatter shows up as a mysterious character named — wait for it — Shooter Dival. He’s Benji’s best man, and somewhat surprisingly, has more to do than you’d imagine. Khatter delivers perhaps the most understated performance of the lot, despite having to do an awkward American accent and suggesting, in one scene, that Indians don’t know what mustard is. He deserves an award or two simply for saying that ‘the yellow stuff is difficult to find in Mumbai’ with a straight face.
Every episode of The Perfect Couple ends with bombshell revelations that become increasingly incredible, before entering loony toons territory by episode six — an absolutely outrageous finale that appears to have passed a semester at the Cuttputlli school of murder mystery storytelling. Agatha Christie, who is cited by Greer as an inspiration, once said that resorting to the supernatural in a detective story is tantamount to cheating the reader. While no ghosts show up in The Perfect Couple — or, do they? — the series tries to have its (five-tier) cake and eat it too by pretending, entirely unprompted, to be a feminist call-to-arms at the end. For a murder mystery to be dissatisfying is one thing, but for it to be disingenuous is another.
The Perfect Couple
Director – Susanne Bier
Cast – Nicole Kidman, Eve Hewson, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, Ishaan Khatter, Jack Reynor, Dakota Fanning, Billy Howle, Donny Lynne Champlin
Rating – 2/5
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