The Perfect Couple Review: Nothing New But Thoroughly Entertaining

In Netflix’s most-anticipated mystery-drama series, we see Amelia getting married to Benji, the son of the wealthy Nantucket Winbury family. Although there are tensions between the bride and the matriarch of the family, Greer, things move on as smoothly as possible until a dead body is found on the beach. The incident forces several secrets to come tumbling out and everyone becomes a suspect.

Based on The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand, the limited series has 6 episodes with a runtime of 60 minutes and directed by Susanne Bier.

The Perfect Couple Review

In Netflix’s newest mystery-drama series, we have a murder and a hunt for the killer through a messy, dysfunctional family with many secrets. The series projects itself as a very serious and deadly affair, but by the end of the runtime, surprisingly, there’s something quite lighthearted about it that is infectious. First and foremost, I love the opening credit because it is so fun & engaging and more so because it reminds me of Pachinko, which is one of my favourites.

We then move on to the mystery at hand – the bride Amelia’s best friend Merritt washes up dead the night before her wedding, causing the wedding to halt to a stop along with the entire family’s facade going up in flames. Matriarch Greer comes off as a cold and conniving woman desperate to hold the image of the family together but, of course, when someone is murdered, things just start tumbling out of the closet at some point. Although the central mystery of the series isn’t new or truly too shocking, I think it’s the relationships between all of the characters and their interactions that make this a thoroughly engaging watch.

With a great ensemble cast, the series does a great job of twisting and turning these relationships in and around each other. Of course, there are a ton of overlapping “relationships” that give everyone the motive, but it’s always the ones that we least expect who end up subverting our expectations. The 6 episodes explore these relationships thoroughly, both with each other and with our victim, giving us an in-depth look at familial relationships and how even those who look the cleanest from the outside can be dirty and complicated.

This is, obviously, a story of a ton of rich people doing shady stuff, a trope that we have seen many times in these stories. With Amelia being the odd one out, her friction with everyone else provides a really interesting addition to the murder plot. Along with that, we have Greer’s relationship with everyone else and one can say that Kidman’s Greer shares the spotlight with Hewson’s Amelia in terms of character arcs. I am not going to say this isn’t something that we haven’t ever seen before, but I think it’s really bingeable and whatever tropes and cliches that the series brings forth are dealt with in a way that is not boring.

The last time I saw Kidman was in A Family Affair with Zac Efron and Joey King, a movie that gives me second-hand embarrassment whenever I accidentally remember it. However, she feels right at home in this Netflix venture and I loved seeing her being the ruthless and no-nonsense matriarch who hates anyone who tries to take away the image of her perfect family. Hewson, as Amelia is great as well and she takes you on this emotional journey where nothing that she knew turns out to be true. Dakota Fanning, as Abby Winbury, Amelia’s sister-in-law, is also fantastic and is probably my favourite character here.

The men are great too; Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor, Ishaan Khatter and Billy Howle prove over and over again why they can’t be trusted in any given situation but Khatter’s Shooter Dival is sweet, mysterious and has a charm about him that catches your eye. Schreiber as the despicable Tag Winbury is great as the good-for-nothing patriarch and Reynor, as Thomas Winbury, is another version of his character in Midsommer – spineless and utterly disappointing. The amalgamation of these hard-headed women and disappointing men creates great energy and drama that makes The Perfect Couple delicious to watch.

There’s a ton of humour in the series that, although fleeting, is quite funny. The moment when Greer was taken into questioning in the last episode was quite hilarious and the series continues to play with her character and make her a whole person in eventual scenes. I felt that all of the characters, actually, were quite well-created and although not all take up as much space on-screen, none are really flower-pot characters.

Final Thoughts

This Netflix series is neither ingenious nor is it particularly new but it’s the characters that are really fun and entertaining. You might be able to figure out who the killer is but the path to the end is engaging in a very dramatic way, especially because the characters are just so twisted.

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