The Perfect Couple: When There's Something Scarier Than Nantucket Tourism

This Netflix drama shares the story of Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson), a young woman whose impending nuptials to the wealthiest family in Nantucket ends in disaster when a body is discovered on the beach. Everyone in the wedding party soon becomes a suspect, including Amelia's future in-laws Greer (Nicole Kidman) and Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber).

If I could use one word to describe this show it would be subtle. The acting among the female characters showed an incredible display of elusiveness, where you never quite know what they're thinking. For example, Nicole Kidman's amazing portrayal of Greer Winbury saw such nuanced aggression as her facade of a perfect lifestyle was disintegrating around her. It was an interesting contrast to the male characters, whose wealth, status, and ego often influenced them to be much more direct, like a bull in a china shop. Greer's husband Tag often fueled chaos and left disaster in his wake with no self-awareness. But I guess that can happen when one is obscenely wealthy.

Greer had my favorite evolution; as she's forced to confront that perfection doesn't actually exist, she bravely decides to leave the toxicity in her life behind. She separates from her parasitic husband, and decides to venture away from previous literary expectations as a writer. However, the show also demonstrates that sometimes people don't mature. Tag continues his self-destructive ways, and eldest son Thomas Winbury (Jack Reynor) will still be annoyingly self-absorbed while wearing J.Crew polo shirts. But I think it's necessary to show that dichotomy: how people don't always grow.

There were some limitations of the show. Some of the transitions and acting felt occasionally awkward to me. The flow sometimes wasn't smooth and there were cuts that felt forced, especially between the police detectives Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) and Dan Carter (Michael Beach). I also felt that the ending was underwhelming and bizzarely ambiguous. We discover that Thomas' wife Abby Winbury (Dakota Fanning) was the murderer but the reasoning was left unclear to me. I kept thinking "What? Why?" which was pretty unfortunate as an audience member who felt that the beginning of the show was enjoyable. It's a quick, entertaining watch that's hilariously unhinged however be prepared for some minor bumps in the road.