It’s gorgeous to look at, it stars a 4,000-bedroom mansion on a beautiful stretch of US coastline and it’s packed with lavish lifestyles funded by fifth-generational wealth. There are cashmere knits in impractical colours, plus more beautiful coastline, a murder that almost everyone in the vicinity had a motive to carry out – and did I mention the beautiful coastline?
We can only be in the presence of Nicole Kidman’s latest vehicle. This time, it’s called The Perfect Couple, but you can think of it as Big Little Lies relocated from Monterey, California, to Nantucket, Massachusetts. Or as The Undoing with plot. Or as Nine Perfect Strangers, but not bonkers. It is also, as any luxe murder-mystery is these days, part The White Lotus – which Kidman wasn’t in, but who can quite remember?
So, what are the tweaks to the spec? The perfect couple of the title are a bestselling romantic novelist named, for some reason – perhaps abusive parents, perhaps a case of Bertie Wooster’s “raw work pulled at the font” – Greer Garrison Winbury (Kidman) and Tag (Liev Schreiber), her husband of 29 years. It is possible that they are not as perfect as they seem. They have three sons – Thomas (Jack Reynor), a piece of work, golden boy Benji (Billy Howle) and youngster Will (Sam Nivola) who hadn’t come into play in the episodes available to reviewers, but rare indeed is the character in these chess-like productions that goes unused so we’ll watch and wait for his move.
Benji is getting married to Amelia (Eve Hewson), whom he loves madly, even though she was brought up without sight of the sea and with no cashmere knits. Greer is icily furious about this and is taking it out on everybody in the most Waspy way possible – by creating the perfect wedding for the pair, admiring the fruit basket Amelia’s parents bring as a gift and savaging the bride behind her back at every opportunity.
Almost as adept at slicing and dicing those who aren’t born to the purple is Thomas’s pregnant wife, Abby (Dakota Fanning, having a wonderful time as a weakness-seeking missile) and the wedding planner, Roger (Tim Bagley), deeply in thrall to the glamour of his betters. “They’re ‘I’m bored – let’s go buy a monkey’ rich!” he says with glee. “‘Kill someone and get away with it’ rich.”
Subtle foreshadowing has its place, but not here. There is also the Winbury’s faithful housekeeper (Gosia, played by Irina Dubova), who is contemptuous of anyone who has not been born into or worked for the family for at least two generations, and a particular admirer of Greer’s tight rein over all. “Without fear, there can be no control.” Their interviews with the police intersect the action and shed sidelights on the main characters, just as those of potential witnesses and suspects did in Big Little Lies. It’s equally effective.
Added to this little lot is the hard-partying maid of honour Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy) – more “raw work” – an $18,000 bracelet bought by Tag, but not given to his wife, and lustful looks cast by Amelia at the best man, Shooter (Ishaan Khattar). There are many ignored calls to Greer from someone called Broderick Graham, pills and pot free to all and a bloodstained shirt hidden under the bed of the police chief’s daughter. Throw in Isabelle Adjani as a longtime family friend (and semtex in human form) and the stage is set for us to have a ludicrously good time in the very doggest days of summer.
Once the police investigation starts, it becomes clear who the star of the show is – neither Kidman nor the mansion, nor even the knits, but Donna Lynne Champlin as Det Nikki Henry. What a performance. Every thought the detective is having about these awful people plays fleetingly across her face, although never for long enough to jeopardise the case, however much she hauls the local police chief, Dan (Michael Beach), over the coals for cosying up to the family that funds so much activity in the community.
The Perfect Couple has a proper plot – and some to spare. The carousel of suspects turns and reveals drop at perfectly spaced intervals; if there is anyone who can resist bingeing all six episodes once they have started, I will eat a fruit basket. It may or may not have things to say about the haves and have-nots, the power of money to corrupt, as well as class consciousness, but it doesn’t have anything like the interest The White Lotus, say, took in such questions. It was adapted by Jenna Lamia from the book of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand, who is known as the queen of the beach read. Lamia has kept exactly what makes such books great and presented us with a glorious, ridiculous treat. Nothing to do but sit back and enjoy.
• The Perfect Couple is on Netflix
• This article was amended on 5 September 2024. Irina Dubova plays the housekeeper Gosia, not Amory D. Wallace and the the Winburys have three sons, not two.
