“Pitched somewhere between ‘The White Lotus’, ‘Glass Onion’ and the latest Harlan Coben series”, Netflix’s six-part drama “The Perfect Couple” is “a glossy spin on the rich-people-are-awful sub-genre of murder-mystery,” said Sophie Butcher in Empire.
Nicole Kidman stars as Greer, a fabulously rich novelist whose son’s wedding on Nantucket is ruined when a body turns up on the beach. Suddenly, everyone staying at the family’s huge beach house for the weekend is a suspect. The dialogue is often a bit cheesy, and the whole thing is “schmaltzy, silly and very soapy”; but it’s elevated by an impressive supporting cast that includes Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning; and the compelling plotting and well-established characters “will have you hooked”.
The series ticks off “every cliché of the megabucks mystery thriller”, said Benji Wilson in The Daily Telegraph, from its title to the fact that none of the couples are perfect; in fact, they all hate each other. Still, though it is all predictable and trashy, this is “top-notch trash”, a show that aims only for “sugar-hit moreishness” and hits the mark time and again.
“Nantucket looks ludicrously beautiful; the family are ludicrously snobbish and unpleasant”, and however hard you try to resist it, “you will want to know the who, what, where and why-dunit”.
I found it “awful: ugly, slow, boring”, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. The cast are horribly dunked in fake tan, and it’s deeply unfunny. You’d do much better watching the new season of “Slow Horses”, which is “utterly brilliant”.