Nicole Kidman stars in simple soap opera fun: NPR

Nicole Kidman as Greer Winbury in The perfect couple.

Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

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The first question raised by the new Netflix series The perfect couple is this: Why does Nicole Kidman keep playing a series of cool, wealthy mothers with secrets? Big little lies, The downfall, Expats and now this. Maybe she just likes beautiful surroundings and great clothes?

Here, in a series based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand, Kidman plays Greer Garrison Winbury (a great name for a rich jerk), a successful novelist whose large family gathers at their Nantucket estate to plan the wedding of their son Benji (Billy Howle) to his fiancée Amelia (Eve Hewson).

The rehearsal dinner goes well, but the morning after is less so, as a body washes up on the beach. This is the part where you can easily be forgiven for shouting “DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN!” What follows is a murder mystery where family secrets are revealed, dirty laundry is not just aired but washed up to the flagpole, and yes, you eventually learn how the body got there.

Also present for the wedding weekend are Greer’s son Thomas (Jack Reynor) and his wife Abby (Dakota Fanning), their somewhat hapless younger son Will (Sam Nivola), Amelia’s best friend Merritt (Meghann Fahy), best man Shooter (Ishaan Khatter), and the family’s very French friend Isabel (Isabelle Adjani).

Donna Lynne Champlin, left, as Nikki Henry and Michael Beach as Dan Carter.

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One of the smartest decisions in this show is the casting of the law enforcement officers: local police chief Dan Carter (Michael Beach) and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin). Beach is a reliably appealing, likable, flexible actor who can be very serious or very funny; Champlin was brilliant as Paula in Crazy ex-girlfriend and brings the perfect touch of disbelief as Nikki, who isn’t from around here, finds out more and more about how these people really live. Without humor, this show wouldn’t be fun at all; it couldn’t be a super-serious drama, otherwise it would just be… Big little lies again. Instead, it’s a drawn-out mystery that sticks to its emotional leitmotifs (it’s really sad about that corpse!) while the characters’ reactions underline the fact that it’s not intended to be taken to seriously.

It also helps enormously that the show is only six episodes long. If it were eight, or (God forbid) ten, it would drag and the numerous red herrings would become tiring. But it moves along at a solid pace, continues to reveal information (some of which I really wasn’t expecting), and then it solves the mystery — and fairly, by telling you who the culprit actually is. (Spoiler: It deviates, to be clear, from Hilderbrand’s ending, which I only discovered after I saw it, and which, frankly, would have been a completely different show — and probably would have made me angry.)

It’s a juicy, clever little end-of-summer crime story where everyone is beautiful and all the arguments are public and sloppy, where the house is beautiful and the drinks are unlimited. It’s not much more than that, but it’s also not much less. And as far as I’m concerned, Beach and Champlin in particular can team up in a crime story every summer.

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