Binge or Cringe: The Perfect Couple

Is The Perfect Couple the perfect binge-watch?

“They’re rich … kill-someone-and-get-away-with-it rich.” That’s how wedding planner Roger Pelton (Tim Bagley) sums up the Winbury family with one line in The Perfect Couple, the Netflix adaptation of “Queen of the Beach Reads” Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel.

They’re not only rich, but they’re also beautiful and familiar: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, Eve Hewson, and Dakota Fanning star here.

It looks like a postcard from Nantucket, the cast is impressive, and the source material is requisitely juicy—but is the six-episode The Perfect Couple worth your streaming time?

Let’s dive into it and decide if this just-released Netflix limited series deserves a Binge (yes, definitely see it) or a Cringe (ew, don’t bother watching it).

What The Perfect Couple is about

The Perfect Couple opens on a breezy Nantucket beach scene, with a rehearsal dinner for Benji Winbury (Billy Howie) and Amelia Sacks (Hewson) underway. Benji is a fortunate son of old Massachusetts money—specifically, the son of (there are some ridiculous blue-blood names coming your way; be prepared) Tag (Schreiber) and Greer Winbury (Kidman).

We’re soon introduced to more family and friends, including Amelia’s BFF maid of honor, Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), Benji’s best man, Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khattar), Benji’s big brother, Thomas (Jack Reynor), and Thomas’ pregnant wife, Abby (Fanning). Sure, some of them have ludicrous first names, but no one here seems like the “kill-someone-and-get-away-with-it” type … yet.

Cut to the next morning: Amelia, in her wedding dress (great visual), discovers a dead body washed up on the beach, and it’s someone from the wedding party—but who? Spoiler: Pay attention to who isn’t being interrogated by the local police, and you’ll probably figure it out before the big reveal at the end of the first episode. The mystery is afoot, motives are indicated, and flashback storytelling is in full effect.

What The Perfect Couple will remind you of

If you’ve seen Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, Apples Never Fall, Little Fires Everywhere, or The Undoing (most of which also starred Kidman), you know what you’re in for with The Perfect Couple: Wealthy people + dark family secrets = gorgeously filmed streaming tragedy. It even has a subtly knowing title sequence song in Meghan Trainor’s “Criminals,” complete with the cast dancing on the beach—top that, Bloodline.

The Perfect Couple—which refers to Greer and Tag, who are anything but—shares a vibe with those other family dramas but comes from some unlikely creatives. Showrunner Jenna Lamia has written for Good Girls and Resident Alien, and director Susanne Beir has worked on The Night Manager, Bird Box, and Kidman’s The Undoing.

Likely thanks to Lamia’s previous writing gigs, The Perfect Couple has an underlying sense of humor that the other “beach-read” adaptations don’t—yes, there was a murder, but we don’t have to be so serious about it. The Perfect Couple sits at a midpoint on the fam-dram shoreline between Big Little Lies and The White Lotus.

The best part of The Perfect Couple

Hewson is the normie’s eye into The Perfect Couple, and her observation of this WTF? family is invaluable. As she did in Behind Her Eyes and Bad Sisters, she’s a relatable everywoman who fits in and stands out simultaneously, even among this murderer’s row (pun fully intended) of actors. Kidman may be the headliner, but Hewson makes the show work.

Also, Schreiber’s lackadaisical, cruising-on-generational-wealth stoner Tag is such a sharp contrast to his previous intense, broody-moody title character in Ray Donovan that it’s never not funny. Unless you haven’t seen Ray Donovan, then probably not so much.

The worst part of The Perfect Couple

Can we ever have one of these dramas without the flashback/flashforward narrative? Linear stories are people, too, Hollywood.

So, should you binge or cringe The Perfect Couple?

Binge The Perfect Couple. It’s a frothy good time that only requires a six-hour commitment on a rainy weekend when you rather be at the beach (with or without a dead body). It has enough in common with the like-minded family dramas that came before it to be familiar, but it also has its own unique flavor strong enough to make you forget that you’re watching Kidman in another one of these series.