The Perfect Couple Should Be The End Of The Rich People Murder-Mystery

Spoilers ahead. Genres exist for a reason. For us, knowing the genre and its conventions — like the rom-com meet-cute or a thriller’s end-of-act-break plot twist — can help us figure out the kind of storytelling we’re most drawn to. From a writer’s POV, it can set up a helpful framework to build your story within — when does that meet-cute turn into a first kiss, for example. But when a genre (or sub-genre) becomes part of the zeitgeist, there will inevitably be more and more iterations looking to capitalize on the first’s success, so when a new, highly anticipated entry fails to go beyond the familiar, it can feel like a flop. And that is exactly the problem with Netflix’s new limited series, The Perfect Couple, a show that could have done something different in the popular rich people murder-mystery class, but wasn’t ambitious enough to pull it off — and ends up feeling like the wrong show for the wrong time.

Riding off the coattails of shows like Big Little Lies, The Perfect Couple, out on Netflix now, has all the makings of a hit on paper. The series, like so many others before it, is adapted from a bestselling novel, in this case by popular writer Elin Hilderbrand who’s known for her Nantucket-set beach reads. The show is set during the lavish wedding weekend of working-class Amelia (Bad Sisters’ Eve Hewson) to privileged Benji (Billy Howle), the middle son of a wealthy British novelist, but the celebration is interrupted when a dead body turns up on the beach the morning of the nuptials. The cherry on top of the escapist sundae? The high-profile ensemble cast includes Dakota Fanning, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, and, most importantly, Nicole Kidman, who plays Benji’s mother, Greer Garrison Winbury. Based on this information alone, The Perfect Couple has all the potential for a new classic to the genre. If only. 

Instead, the series feels like a pale version of Big Little Lies (which Kidman also stars in), or The White Lotus (Fahy was in Season 2), or even The Undoing (again Kidman, if you’re sensing a pattern here). The Perfect Couple also strangely follows Big Little Lies’ format of splicing catty police-interrogation sequences between actually important scenes. But whereas Big Little Lies crafts nuanced characters and relationships between them — the depth of performances and the chemistry between the women-led cast, which also includes Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, and Zoe Kravitz, made it easy to believe they were friends on-screen and IRL — almost every character in The Perfect Couple is inauthentic or unknowable. We know what their toxic traits are, but not what makes them tick.

The White Lotus’ whodunit is against a backdrop of the most glam form of escapism we’ve seen on screen in years and digs deeper into issues of privilege and class; The Perfect Couple barely skims the surface, never getting to the heart of why Amelia struggles with Benji’s wealth. (And to be fair, the book has other things it’s more interested in — love, family, romance — but none of that feels very developed on screen either.) Meanwhile, episodes of Apples Never Fall, Peacock’s adaptation of the Liane Moriarty novel starring Annette Bening, looked at the same trail of clues from a different character’s POV, making us want to queue up for more. Even The Undoing, which was not an entirely successful HBO series, at least managed to stay twisty and keep us guessing. 

The Perfect Couple is completely predictable. This is evident throughout the show’s six episodes, and there are two sets of relationships that especially feel like wasted opportunities. The first is between bride-to-be Amelia and her future sister-in-law Abby (Fanning). From the series’ first moments, it’s immediately clear that despite being engaged to Benji, Amelia is still an outsider among the Winburys — “She never shows interest in being part of your family,” Greer tells Benji, explaining her reservations about the impending wedding that she has planned. This is not surprising; a newcomer navigating the unfamiliar world is a staple of the rich person murder-mystery (hello, Shailene Woodley in Big Little Lies). On screen, Amelia also doesn’t have much of a relationship with Abby, who is cutting, sarcastic, and all-too-willing to gossip about her family when questioned by police. 

But Abby isn’t fully embedded into the Winbury family, either. She’s mean to Amelia in the group — a way to fit in with the others — and has a strained relationship with her husband, Greer’s eldest son. She’s not working-class like Amelia but tells the police that she didn’t grow up nearly as well off as the Winburys. (In the book, Abby actually comes from a wealthy Texas family and is looked down upon by Greer because of their Southernness.) But when Abby gets Amelia alone, their dynamic is different. In one of their too few one-on-one scenes, Abby becomes more sincere and welcoming, sharing family history and offering advice. “The key to this family is to just stay on the periphery where it’s safe. That’s what I do,” she tells Amelia. 

Suddenly, Amelia has a door — and maybe a guide — into this exclusive, unnavigable world of wealth and privilege. Maybe overcoming class politics and an icy family wouldn’t be impossible with someone else by Amelia’s side. It’s something I can’t recall happening in another show from this genre, a character having a confidante who can offer a genuine helping hand as opposed to having to go it alone. But before the connection is solidified, the moment is over, and the two don’t share a solo conversation together again until two episodes later, the chance to have a meaningful connection is instead punted in favor of uninspired red herrings. If they had spent more time together, tackling the Winbury clan as a team, maybe the show could have found its POV on class, privilege, and family. 

As it turns out, Abby is hiding a secret from Amelia: (major spoiler alert!) she’s the murderer, killing a pregnant Merritt (Fahy) so that the family’s trust fund becomes accessible sooner, a huge departure from the book. (In the book, Merritt accidentally dies after drinking a drugged glass of water that Abby meant for her husband’s mistress.) Maybe the distance between Abby and Amelia on screen is intentional. Or did the show just pull back on a compelling dynamic so that the finale had some shock value? But what if they had gone for it anyway? What if Amelia had come to rely on Abby, then had to come to terms with the fact that the person who made her feel like she belonged in this world had betrayed her in this monumental way because of money — the very reason she feels excluded from the family? The reveal would have had heavy emotional weight behind it rather than feeling like a convenient twist.

There’s also the relationship between Amelia and her best friend/maid of honor, Merritt. We don’t get to see much of it (on account of Merritt being dead), but the duo’s friendship is one of the few dynamics in the show that feels real. They share a language like any BFFs do, and their love for each other seems familiar and true. But even that has limits. On her wedding eve, Amelia confesses to Merritt that she’s having second thoughts about marrying Benji, but that it feels too late to do anything about it because the guests have arrived and Greer has already spent a fortune. Merritt is the epitome of a ride-or-die BFF, assuring Amelia that she can do whatever she’d want with her full backing. But within a blink, Merritt brushes it off as just “cold feet.”

If the show actually explored Amelia’s doubts — with or without Merritt — in a meaningful way, it could have painted a complex portrait of what it means to make a commitment as serious as a marriage. But for most of the show, it’s hard to understand why Benji and Amelia fell in love — just that they met at a work event a year earlier — and it’s revealed through unconvincing flashbacks that Amelia feels more chemistry with his best friend. It’s another storyline that goes to waste because the show only has six episodes to weave its mystery and hit the standard notes of its genre.  

Ultimately, The Perfect Couple is a just fine rich people murder-mystery, and that’s what’s so disappointing. It aims to transport and surprise viewers, like many of the other shows in this subgenre. But while Big Little Lies felt fresh in 2017, we — and the world — have changed a lot since then, while the rich people murder-mystery hasn’t. Excellent entries to the canon can still, of course, exist. But if the best that The Perfect Couple — or any other similar story — can offer is lackluster escapism (no offense, Nantucket), a less glossy dramatization of the bad behavior of the ultra-privileged, and a not-that-twisty mystery when the rest of us are overworked, barely able to afford groceries, and distraught at multiple global crises, doesn’t this all just feel out of touch in 2024? Maybe we’d be better off spending our time finding shows that are willing to push creative limits, or that actually have something to say instead of pretending they do — or at the very least are comfortable with the fact that they exist purely as entertainment.