A beach read is rarely a nutritious mental meal. Rather, it’s a tasty snack to tickle the mind, best filled with twists and turns that may get the heart racing but rarely stir the soul.
Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple, understands this – it’s why many have labelled her the queen of the beach read. Thankfully, so does Jenna Lamia, the creator of the Netflix series based on the book, who has created a series that goes down as easy as a mocktail on a hot summer day.
The series, starring Nicole Kidman, follows the rich and famous Winbury family, who live on the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts, a long-time favourite of American old money. One of the three Winbury sons, Benji (Billy Howle, The Serpent), is set to be married at the property to a middle-class woman named Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson, The Knick), who is treated utmost suspicion by the family’s inner circle, with only her best friend Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy, The White Lotus) on her side.
The cast of characters is built for a murder mystery, as are the actors who play them. Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan, Spotlight) portrays Kidman’s husband Tag, who lives in the shadow of his wife Greer, a famed author of beach reads loosely based on their family.
Jack Reynor (Midsommar) plays their troubled eldest son Thomas, who is always looking for a new scheme to blow his inheritance on, and Dakota Fanning plays his wife Abby, who acts nice so she can stir the pot seemingly innocently and watch it boil from afar.
The show is also more diverse than many of its ilk. Algerian-French actress Isabelle Adjani (Possession) and rising Bollywood heart-throb Ishaan Khatter (Dhadak) both play family friends with secrets of their own, each note-perfect.
A good murder mystery is all about plot and setting, and The Perfect Couple has plot coming out its ears, set in a picturesque and aspirational locale that makes it all go down easy, even when it becomes a bit much.
It’s Merritt Monaco – a name that sounds like a Clue character – who dies on the night of the rehearsal dinner, and, of course, everyone is a suspect. Over the show’s six episodes, the show does an effective job of making you feel like everyone may have done it, and the only reason you’ll have to dismiss a potential culprit is by checking the runtime and realising it’s too early for the big reveal.
While there may be many shows and films that have used this formula more effectively, the hallmark of the genre is that originality doesn’t matter, just execution. This is a time pass, not a life changer. And the cast and humorous tone – elevated by a hilarious performance from Donna Lynne Champlin (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) as a Colombo-esque detective with a thick New England accent – help you forgive and forget the school of unnecessary red herrings.
Breaking down the ending of The Perfect Couple
Warning: this article contains spoilers
So, who did it, and why? Let’s break it down for those who have already finished the show, or those who like to flip to the last page of a book before they read it.
Merritt Monaco was a troubled woman full of secrets, who had a habit of choosing the wrong men. One of those men was Tag Winbury, who, we learn, began an affair with Monaco a year before her death.
When Merritt arrives for the wedding, she reveals to Tag that she’s pregnant with his child, which threatens to undo Tag and Greer’s marriage.
So, did Tag kill Merritt? No, but the pregnancy was the reason for her murder. Tag and Greer’s children, we learn, will only be able to access their trust fund when the youngest child in the family turns 18. That is supposed to be only weeks away, with their youngest son Will set to come of age, but another child would restart the clock, and leave the sons empty-handed for another 18 years.
That was simply too long a wait for Thomas’s wife Abby, played by Fanning, who steals a sleeping pill and slips it into a drink she gives to Merritt, as she sits on the beach, heart-broken that Tag is not happy about the pregnancy news.
The two then go into the water, and when the pill kicks in, Abby holds her head under the water to finish off the job.
Champlin solves the murder when she realises that Abby had been particularly nervous while cleaning a glass when the police had initially come to question her – the same glass she had used to drug Monaco.
Of course, even with the murder solved, all is not well with the rest of the Winbury family and friends, who have been torn apart by the revelations brought to light during the murder investigation.
At the very end of the show, Kidman’s Greer travels to London a year after the murder to find Amelia Sacks, who has left her son, to tell her that she’s based her latest book on her would-have-been daughter-in-law, ending their long feud.
What is The Perfect Couple really about?
So, does this series have anything to say about life, wealth, relationships, or anything else? Honestly, not really. There is some light class conflict to be had, but never much of a class critique. This story is flattering to all involved, and while we point out that the rich aren’t perfect, there is never any real satire to be found.
This is not the kind of show that will leave you with something to think about – leave that to creator Mike White and his ongoing show The White Lotus. This is pure junk food, and one that won’t leave you with much regret for having gobbled it up the next morning.
The Perfect Couple is now streaming on Netflix
