n Ishmael’s description, this island off the coast of Massachusetts in the north east of the US is a depleted, weathered place, scarcely distinguishable from the sea. It’s a location for hard and dangerous work, too, as the inhabitants venture into the “watery world” offshore to catch everything from mackerel to whales.
The version of Nantucket we see in The Perfect Couple, Netflix’s new six-part drama, is very different. Here it’s super-rich socialites, not salt-encrusted mariners, who occupy narrative space. They engage in conspicuous leisure, lounging poolside or circulating from party to party. Even Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman), a highly successful writer of popular romances, is most often seen using her fingers to hold a wine glass rather than to hammer at a computer.
Adapted by Jenna Lamia from Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling 2018 novel of the same name, and directed by Susanne Blier (perhaps best known for directing the BBC’s Le Carré adaptation The Night Manager in 2016), The Perfect Couple intertwines romance and mystery. The Winbury family gathers at its Nantucket beach house to celebrate the wedding of middle son Benji and his fiancée Amelia. A suspicious death occurs in episode one, leaving a tangle of erotic complication and forensic evidence that is unravelled across episodes two to six.
A cocktail of ingredients
A good deal of mixing, both authorised and transgressive, goes on in The Perfect Couple. Contrasting with the licensed partnering of Benji and Amelia, scandalous liaisons take place (many of them involving the groom’s father Tag: a person who has never done a day’s work, according to the local police chief, but someone with unbounded energy for sex, drink and drugs). Narcotics are dangerously combined in games of “prescription roulette” and blackberry mojito cocktails play a minor role in the plot.
All of this mixing and combining at the level of story is suggestive, for in its very composition The Perfect Couple is a synthesis of multiple pre-existing materials. It is put together itself rather in the manner of a cocktail.
Take one part Succession (for fraught family drama), one part The White Lotus (for glamorous setting) and one part Big Little Lies (for Nicole Kidman’s star presence). Mix liberally with Rian Johnson’s duo of detective films Knives Out and Glass Onion (for murderous intrigue among the super-wealthy). Finish with a generous glug of Agatha Christie: there’s a knowing nod towards this influence in episode three when Greer discloses that she had “an Agatha Christie obsession”.
The Perfect Couple’s weakness, however, is that it resembles these precursors only cosmetically, failing to carry across what makes them compelling or memorable. No equivalent is offered for the startlingly inventive language of Succession, say, or the graphic sexuality of The White Lotus.
And while The Perfect Couple could easily be retitled Christie-style – Murder on Nantucket Sound, perhaps? – the series underwhelms also as murder mystery. The police station’s doors revolve rapidly in episodes five and six, as multiple suspects are questioned; yet the interrogations lack jeopardy or tension (even, at times, plausibility). The plot is complicated, certainly, but in the final analysis un-nourishing – rather like the oyster canapes served at a Winbury party.
Continues…
For the full article by Professor Andrew Dix visit the Conversation.
ENDS