Review: The Perfect Couple (Netflix, 2024)
I love a mystery show, and I especially love a mystery show about rich people being terrible. And it seems like American producers are finally learning from British mystery shows and casting good actors in every role. And yet, ultimately, I didn’t love it.
Let’s start with the cast—Liev Schreiber, Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning, and Eve Hewson, whose acting career almost certainly has nothing to do with her being Bono’s kid, all give excellent performances. Donna Lynne Champlin nearly steals the series in a supporting role as the mainland detective sent to Nantucket to investigate a murder.
The mystery resolves in satisfying fashion, and some of the character development is skillfully done. While Liev and Nicole’s three boys are underwritten and two-dimensional (poor Billy Howle tries his best to instill his character with an arc that the writers didn’t provide), the women are all complicated and have interesting arcs.
And yet I have some issues.
Also there was some stuff I didn’t love about the show. (badump-BUM!)
A lot of this involves the last episode, so I’d recommend skipping the rest if you haven’t watched the show yet. (tl;dr— flawed but definitely compelling and worth watching).
First, the cliche of the humble, hardworking cops just trying to get to the bottom of the mystery grated on me. Especially because one detective is supposed to be from the Massachusetts State Police, which recent events have revealed to be an incredibly corrupt, incompetent agency.
But okay, I guess I can overlook that. There are shows with elves in them, and those aren’t real either.
But there’s a weird tonal shift in the last episode. What seemed to be a dark drama with moments of comic relief for five episodes is revealed to be a dark comedy. I just found this kind of jarring. And the stuff with Greer was, in my opinion, cheesy. There are plenty of icy WASP matriarchs out there whose iciness cannot be explained by the fact that they’re hiding their past as a sex worker, and to my mind, it’s more interesting to figure out how someone became a terrible person without having a Dickensian backstory.
Also, the big resolution of the story seems to be Greer self-actualizing as an honest person, but, like, that wasn’t really the conflict in the story. And honestly, every character but one who was horrible in the show gets a happy ending, which I found displeasing. We spent five episodes hating these people and we’re supposed to be glad that the murder of a guest helped them to lead authentic lives? Blecch!
Finally, the “cast in a dance number” opening credits was done first and better in Peacemaker.