“The Perfect Couple” Retreads Higher Presentations About Sinful Lavish Community | TV/Streaming | Roger Ebert

Right here’s a shocker for you: the titular pair in Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple” isn’t, in reality, very best. I’m certain your thoughts is blown. Similar to it’ll be while you come around the display’s radical organizing idea that cash does no longer purchase happiness.

Retreading some well-worn farmland, Netflix’s status homicide thriller order cribs closely from the “White Lotus” type of blending homicide with category warfare to the level that it even borrows a forged member (the always-compelling Meghann Fahy). And it’s that repetition, on supremacy of the by-product nature of the basis, that makes “The Perfect Couple” a ways from a really perfect observe.

This one opens in Nantucket at an old-money $40 million property (as one much less spectacularly ffluent persona notes) of the Winbury folk. They’re so rich that most effective the mummy, Nicole Kidman’s Greer Garrison Winbury, seems to paintings, churning out best-selling homicide mysteries each pace. She should be making J. Okay. Rowling-level cash to bankroll her husband (who beverages and smokes all month) and their 3 sons (who, at preferrred are hobbyists) with non-public jet rides and indulgent events. The lads’s contributions seem to be prominent folk off beam into crypto-investing, spending cash on their mistresses, and looking forward to their trusts to kick in.

Center son Benji (an uncanny Billy Howle) is getting married to Amelia (Eve Hewson), an alluring everywoman who serves to show how other the extraordinarily ffluent in point of fact are. When any person turns up useless the morning next the practice session dinner and sooner than the primary match, everybody’s a suspect. Queue the track.

Now, there’s not anything incorrect with style presentations hitting their beats. The eat-the-rich category farce has been wildly pervasive in recent years from the bonkers “Saltburn” to the AI-inflected “A Murder at the End of the World” to the most commonly captivating “Knives Out.” And prefer the ones, this one asks us to ogle the products of ultimate wealth–the gorgeous garments and palatial residing quarters, the superior perspectives and maid provider–week additionally exposing their life as completely outlandish. “The Perfect Couple,” as an example, does this by the use of a scene the place Amelia forums a non-public jet and obviously feels uncomfortable and out of playground.

However the display’s show of riches in large part fails to distract or enrich. The home is nice-looking, sure, however it may possibly’t compete with the herbal wonderful thing about the island, a eye to be had to someone who can get at the ferry and featured prominently all through the order by the use of transitional nature photographs. The Winbury property does colonize one of the most good looks, privatizing their explicit perspectives and stretch of seashore. However the finish outcome isn’t envying the home such a lot as the site–who’s in a position for a low-budget excursion of Fresh England lighthouses? This is to mention, “The Perfect Couple” doesn’t upload a lot of anything else to the social-class debate, even with regards to showcasing the entire issues cash should buy.

However that doesn’t cruel it’s with out benefit. Any manufacturing that provides Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning (Abby, the pregnant spouse of the eldest son), Meghann Fahy, Eve Hewson, and Donna Lynne Champlin (the nonplussed detective) such meaty portions has a reason why to exist. And it’s most commonly the ladies’s display, even supposing Liev Schreiber because the bored patriarch and Michael Seashore because the native (and so doubtlessly compromised) police well-known additionally installed robust performances.

That stated, the whodunit section isn’t so admirable. The entire richies (they usually put together up lots of the forged) are hideous folk. That anybody of them may believably dedicate homicide might conserve you guessing. However since they’re all so unlikeable, it’s crisp to aid who’s in point of fact accountable of this actual crime–they’re every accountable of enough. I’d like to mention let all of them rot in a prison cellular, however it sort of feels most probably that their cash will conserve them preserve, cocooned in the most productive felony protection their hefty fortunes should buy.

Next there’s additionally how the display performs with year, leaping between the evening of the homicide and the investigation in a while. Flashbacks are par for the direction in a display like this however “The Perfect Couple” seems to be purposefully toying with the viewer via no longer giving enough quantity clues to suss out the proper form of items. There aren’t any captions or adjustments in lights to tell apart the timelines. Which makes enjoying armchair detective at the side of the characters unnecessarily irritating.

It’s complication for complication’s sake, mainly window dressing for a display that boils right down to the concept ffluent folk are bizarre. Now there’s nonetheless some pleasure in looking at however you’ll need to make a decision when you like Nicole Kidman enough quantity to spend six hours with those hideous folk. I’m pondering there are alternative issues to look at.

Six episodes screened for evaluate. Now on Netflix.