Nicole Kidman gets nasty in Netflix thriller

In the first episode of The Perfect Couple, event planner Roger Felton speaks with police after a guest at a party hosted by his employers — world-famous author Greer Winbury (Nicole Kidman) and her husband, Tag (Liev Schreiber) — turns up dead. “Oh, they’re rich,” smirks Roger of the Winburys. “’Child sex ring on a private island’ rich. ‘I’m bored. Let’s go buy a monkey’ rich. ‘Kill someone and get away with it’ rich.”

If it isn’t clear from those venomous quips — delivered with signature panache by comedic character actor Tim Bagley, who plays Roger — The Perfect Couple (premiering Sept. 5 on Netflix) delights in deriding its uberwealthy protagonists. Based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestseller and adapted for the screen by Jenna Lamia (Good Girls), this arch and at times outlandish miniseries delivers the cheap and tasty thrills of a beach read on a lavish, prestige-streamer budget.

It’s the week of July 4th and a crowd of tony, East-coast society folk have descended at Summerland — Greer and Tag’s $40 million Nantucket estate — for the wedding of Benji Winbury (Billy Howle), wealthy scion, and Amelia Sacks (Bad Sisters‘ Eve Hewson), a decidedly middle-class zookeeper. Though Greer would never allow her family — including her obnoxious eldest, Tom (Jack Reynor); snooty daughter-in-law, Abby (Dakota Fanning); and sensitive youngest child, Will (Sam Nivola) — to be anything less than welcoming, the Winburys share an unspoken understanding that Amelia is, and always will be, an outsider. (“At least my wife matches the f—ing wallpaper,” sneers Tom.) Amelia’s only real ally, besides Benji of course, is her best friend and maid of honor, Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), a stylish and carefree influencer.

To Greer’s intense chagrin, the social event of the season devolves into scandal when a body is found in the water the morning of Benji and Amelia’s wedding. The millionaire matriarch is left scrambling to close ranks as Nantucket Chief of Police Dan Carter (Michael Beach) and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) infiltrate the compound to investigate the death. Then the everyone’s-a-suspect game begins, with a handful of Winbury-adjacent observers taken into the police station to answer questions/serve up nuggets of backstory about the family and their associates as the mystery unfolds. “He makes his own bed like a poor person,” sniffs Gosia (Irina Dubova), the Winbury’s devoted housekeeper, of Benji’s best man, Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khattar). Notes Isabel (Isabelle Adjani), a French bombshell and longtime family friend, “Greer, she has a, how would you say… a broom? Uh, no, a stick in her ass… hole.”

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The Pefect Couple leans heavily on this absurd TV trope — characters who are so at ease while being interrogated by police that they pepper their answers with quips and coy asides — but the show insists that we don’t take it, or its characters, very seriously. Lamia and her writers (whose credits include Bridgerton, Pretty Little Liars, and Awkward) have chosen a heightened approach to Hilderbrand’s original story, one that values dark, capricious comedy over straightforward mystery thrills. (The series was initially developed at Fox, the last broadcast network to put any stock in the dying art of primetime soap opera.) ((RIP Monarch, you glorious mess.))

Lamia and director Susanne Bier (The Undoing) know we love to watch the one-percent squirm, and Bier puts her characters under a microscope with repeated extreme close-ups — zooming in on their haunted eyes, their duplicitous mouths — as though she’s trying to use her camera to smash their polished façades. What Greer dreads most, of course, is a scene — and Perfect Couple makes her endure more than one for our enjoyment. During an intensely awkward family dinner, conversation turns from Doritos to the mysterious disappearance of Will’s former French tutor. When the ingratiating Abby attempts to smooth things over by making a comment about the wine, Greer snaps. “It really doesn’t matter,” she barks, silencing her daughter-in-law with a dismissive wave of the hand.

It’s one of many moments where Kidman, as Greer, allows herself to be unlikable, which is something the Oscar-winning actress rarely does. In her recent TV roles, Kidman has been tormented, aggrieved, angry, sure — but just plain mean? Never. It’s a hoot to watch her embrace Greer’s underlying nastiness, which naturally stems from a Deep Dark Secret not even her family knows. Fanning has a ball as the snooty and condescending Abby, who cloaks all her insults with a sing-song lilt and a sunny smile. Reynor brings the tragicomic relief as Benji’s bullying, insecure brother Tom, and Champlin strikes just the right tone of unflappable bemusement as Detective Henry.

Alas, there isn’t much to Tag Winbury, whose chief personality traits are smoking a lot of weed and a tendency to sing pop songs at inappropriate times. Hewson and Bowle are appealing actors, but their characters are similarly underwritten and suffer from a noticeable lack of chemistry. We’re never really clear why Amelia — who ostensibly has no designs on Benji’s money — wants to marry him in the first place. But in the end, perhaps Greer Winbury is right and it really doesn’t matter. Benji, Amelia, Tag — all of them are just a catalyst for the real entertainment: Watching the rich eat their own. Grade: B

All six episodes of The Perfect Couple premiere Thursday, Sept. 5, on Netflix.