The Perfect Couple (2024)

It’s summer in a wealthy enclave of Nantucket and the Winbury family is preparing to celebrate the wedding of their beloved, soft-spoken son Benji (played by Billy Howle). The family seems obnoxiously wealthy but looks can be deceiving. This age old truth undergirds Jenna Lamia’s 6-part Netflix mini-series.

You see the Winbury family, headed by Greer Garrison Winbury and Tag Winbury and played with icy aloofness and deceptive charm by Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber respectively, is not what it seems. The wealth displayed in their beachfront estate, luxury cars, art collection, and household staff is “tied up” in unspoken assets, thus it falls, to novelist, Greer, to churn out books to maintain the family’s rather decadent lifestyle and keep up appearances which include sending their sons to Deerfield Academy (also in Massachusetts).

By contrast, bride-to-be Amelia Sacks’ (played by Eve Hewson) family is decidedly middle class and her sickly mother and doting father seem out of their depth with the foul-mouthed, dysfunctional Winbury clan whose interactions veer between snide and cruel comments to covert betrayals and very public humiliations. Indeed, what makes The Perfect Couple such an entertaining watch is that the impending wedding and Greer’s coinciding book launch means that friends, family, and publicity entourage have all gathered in Nantucket to watch the inevitable family fireworks.

The fuse comes by way of the suspicious death of the maid of honour, white-model-attractive Merritt Monaco (played with open-hearted naivete by Meghann Fahy) who is both super supportive of her bestie Amelia and super inappropriate with her bestie’s soon-to-be father-in-law, Tag. Let the games begin!

We should point out though that the affair and pregnancy are of course not all Merritt’s fault. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes and Tag (did we mention) is a serial philanderer! The not-family secret shared by most – including the two elder sons Benji and finance-bro Thomas Winbury (played by Jack Reynor with perfect insufferable glee) and Greer – is that Tag is routinely unable to keep it in his pants. Greer not only tolerates Tag’s humiliating antics but cleans up after him. What do we mean? When baby boy Will (played by Sam Nivola with angst-ridden teen energy) demands to know what became of his beloved summer tutor, an older, college-age student, it emerges that dear ole dad had an affair with her too causing all kinds of mayhem.

So no, the patriarch has not learned from his previous mistakes, and yes, Greer is back in the unenviable position of cleaning up after him one more time. But will she? Greer may just have tired of keeping up appearances as The Perfect Couple. This time a grieving Amelia is there too, front and centre and asking uncomfortable questions like “why do you force people to sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements)?

Besides the beautiful seaside setting of Nantucket, many of the scenes take place in the sterile police interrogation room where Chief Dan Carter (played by the veteran black actor Michael Beach) interrogates witnesses and suspects. The show makes it clear that the chief  is not the social equal of the Winburys as we see him in his modest home with his teenage daughter Chloe (played by Mia Isaac) who is friends with the Winbury’s youngest son, Will (Sam Nivola). (One moment that rings false is when Chloe arrives home, ignores her father and refuses a polite greeting to his guest, detective Nikki Henry, slamming her bedroom door in their faces. Ah, black families don’t roll like that!) It is the no-nonsense, wise-cracking detective Henry (played by Donna Lynne Champlin) who is sent in from Bah-ston to interrogate members of the Winbury family, in-laws like Abby Winbury (the icy, privileged, pregnant, blonde white daughter-in-law played by Dakota Fanning), and long-time “friend” who gives entitled pretentiousness a new lease, Isabel Nallet. (Isabelle Adjani’s French accent as Isabel Nallet works well here). Oh, and there’s the household staff like Gosia (played by Irina Dubova) who is far too devoted to “Mr. Tag”.

So, when Amelia finds Merritt face down in the ocean just before her wedding, she is shell-shocked, and let’s just say there are a whole lot of suspects to choose from. It does not help that everyone seemed to know that Merritt was pregnant (with Tag’s baby) and furthermore, that her pregnancy messed things up pretty badly for the family since the sons’ trust funds were to stay jointly under lock and key until the youngest of them turned 18. We’re thinking that a new baby (who reset the clock on the funds’ release) kinda messed things up for them. (Did we mention that Thomas is having an affair with Isabel – who previously had an affair with his father, Tag – and that he owes her $2million?) Throwing another wrench in the system is the handsome best man Shooter Dival (played by Ishaan Khatter), long-time friend who Benji befriended at Deerfield Academy and who has sparks with Amelia. Yeah, it’s messy!

The Perfect Couple features a beautiful setting, a beautiful home, and “beautiful” people behaving in bad, possibly murderous ways. It is an engaging whodunnit that’ll keep you guessing until the very end. It also features a quirky dance number as its opening credits. What’s not to like?