It’s a match made in murder mystery heaven—mystery novelist Elin Hilderbrand, queen of prestige mystery TV Nicole Kidman, and The Night Manager director Susanna Bier are uniting for an adaptation of Hilderbrand’s novel, The Perfect Couple.
People often describe Elin Hilderbrand as “the queen of the beach read”, but that feels a little shallow, given how astutely her characters are drawn, but her books ARE fast-paced reads, which is perfect for vacation. The Perfect Couple is set in the summer colony playground of Nantucket, and it’s about rich people doing bad things over a wedding weekend.
Nicole Kidman stars as the matriarch of the wealthy Winburys, Liev Schreiber plays her obviously caddish husband, Jack Reynor and Billy Howle play the large adult Winbury sons, and Dakota Fanning plays a Winbury daughter-in-law. The cast is rounded out by Meghann Fahy, Michael Beach, and Eve Hewson. Seeing Jack Reynor playing an entitled prick immediately makes me wonder if he’s going to end up sewn into a dead bear, ablaze (again), and I LOVE the way Dakota shrieks, “It’s vintage!” at the failsons.
This trailer is amazing for the way it’s giving classy Lifetime vibes, like everyone is keyed into a very specific frequency and whoever cut this trailer is either lying to us about what this series is, OR it really is going to be a bonkers ride. I won’t go so far to call it parody, but it certainly looks like Nicole Kidman knows what she’s doing here, which is to some degree a sendup of Big Little Lies and the other “rich lady mysteries” we’ve gotten over the last decade or so, like Gone Girl and The Undoing. Her casting in The Perfect Couple feels deliberate in that way.
I am a little surprised Netflix is holding this till September, if only because of the big summer vibes and September is back to school, not beaches and lounging. But they’ve probably got some math equation that tells them just when to drop something like this, which is probably something to do with everyone becoming immediately nostalgic for summer as soon as schools starts. Regardless, I’m here for Nicole Kidman riffing on her own rich lady mystery characters. Her sense of humor is underrated.
