A nimble, even-paced and deliciously twisted whodunnit that takes on board a whole complex of themes – severe family dysfunction, class snobbery, dangerous liaisons, long-buried secrets that sow deep distrust and complexities of policing a town where the rich wield inordinate power – The Perfect Couple, starring Nicole Kidman, Live Schreiber and Ishaan Khatter (in a significant role that he does full justice to), is a near-perfect blend of intrigue, suspense and red herrings.
Riveting from the word go, showrunner and writer Jenna Lamia’s adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling novel of the same name does not slacken one bit as it zigzags through the many twists and turns that follow in the wake of the discovery of a lifeless body on the beach on the morning of a high-society wedding on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
It is the Fourth of July weekend and the family is all set to pull out the stops when they are stopped in their tracks by what the Nantucket police suspect is a case of murder and not a mere accident, as a few of the revellers would have the world believe.
The core of the Netflix series is reminiscent of Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers (both starring Nicole Kidman and set in a Californian town) and The White Lotus but The Perfect Couple is, firmly and surely, its own beast.
Besides not being a boilerplate affair, it is fleet-footed enough not to be weighed, or slowed, down by an exceptionally busy plot that gets progressively intricate by the time the sixth and final episode, at 63 minutes the longest of the lot, starts.
Director Susanne Bier has a proven track record of dissecting the actions of flawed people in an imperfect world and unveiling the many psychological imponderables of human behaviour. She brings all her acumen into play in fleshing out the residents of a seaside summer mansion, their lovers, friends and foes, and their individual and collective shenanigans and fixations.
The perfect couple of the title are anything but a pair that anybody should emulate. Super-successful murder mystery writer Greer Garrison Winbury (Kidman) has 28 bestsellers and 29 choppy years of marriage under her belt. She is a cynical control freak who has much to hide. And so does her husband, the Tag Winbury (Live Schreiber), who never misses an opportunity to assert he still loves his wife more than anybody or anything else in the world.
Their flashy lifestyle is funded as much by the wealth that Greer’s books have generated as by the family wealth the Winburys have had for several generations. That allows Greer’s life partner and three sons the luxury of not having to ever worry about where their next million dollar is going to come from.
The opening episode of the series kicks off with the pre-party of the wedding of Greer’s son, Benji (Billy Howle), and the far less affluent Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson), a zookeeper from Easton, Pennsylvania who, in the snooty novelist’s eye, an interloper the Winburys would be better off without.
The best man and the groom’s friend from his university days, Shooter Dival (Khatter), arrives well in time for the event, but the maid of honour, Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy, who was in The White Lotus, too), a lady of infectious effervescence who instantly makes her presence felt in the gathering, is a tad delayed.
Both guests – Shooter has a special bond with Greer – have an impact on how things turn out over the next few days for the Winburys and the law enforcers of Nantucket.
Hours after the wedding-eve bash winds up, a body is discovered on the beach. The nuptials are called off. The local police, led by Chief Dan Carter (Michael Beach), and Detective Nikki Henry (played brilliantly by Donna Lynne Champlin, who steals everybody’s thunder every now and then all through the six-episode drama series), begin their investigation. Everybody in the family and around it is a suspect and a potential witness.
This is, in essence, familiar territory – Greer tells a television interviewer that she once had “an Agatha Christie obsession” – but The Perfect Couple has characters and situations that take the tale in directions that befuddle as much as they seem perfectly plausible given the world that
the Winburys inhabit and the fictional universe that Greer derives great mileage from.
Greer is a public figure fiercely protective of the image of her family, marriage and lifestyle she wants to project. No Winbury, especially a girl marrying into the family, has the option to defy the rules that she sets. Abby learns to live with that reality but Amelia recoils in bewilderment at the suggestion she cannot speak her mind and do her heart’s bidding.
Some of the twists in The Perfect Couple may feel a tad contrived and arbitrary, but The Perfect Couple never stops springing surprises. It does not fall into a pattern of predictability although the quick succession of incidents and revelations – provided mostly through answers that the suspects and witnesses provide to questions asked during police interrogation – prepares the audience not to take anything at face value.
Everybody in The Perfect Couple has issues with each other and not so much with the rest of the world, which they have the means to shut out from their line of vision when they want. Greer’s eldest son Thomas (Jack Reynor), his pregnant wife Abby (Dakota Fanning), who can sense the hostility that Amelia provokes in the class-conscious Greer, and youngest Winbury sibling, Will (Sam Nivola), constantly grapple with enervating, if not outright malefic, forces at work around them.
The opulent cottage of the Winburys in Nuntucket is named Summerland. But there is permanent winter in there what the frosty vibes go around and the dark and dirty secrets that lurk in every nook and cranny of a home that is more a prison than a refuge.
The actors, led by Kidman, are all in their elements, with the script and the directorial interventions set just the right stage for them to bring the characters and their foibles alive. Schreiber is terrific as one half of “the perfect couple”. Hewson holds her own as the unwilling disruptor who sets the cat the among the pigeons in the Winbury household. The plot gives Ishaan Khatter the scope to stand out in the crowd. He makes the most of it.
Bingeworthy all the way.
