Perfect Couple review: Netflix rich people murder mystery should have been a movie

The setting: A police interrogation room.

The context: A dead body has been found in a wealthy enclave.

The scene: A peripheral character gleefully tells a detective that in their rich, exclusive community, not everyone is as they seem.

Put your hand up if you’ve seen this before. Both hands if it was another TV drama starring Nicole Kidman. Ding, ding, ding!

The Perfect Couple has all the trappings of Big Little Lies in that it is set in a beautiful mansion by the sea, centred on a privileged and moneyed family swathed in a cashmere, linen and silk Club Monaco wardrobe, except more elevated and expensive - and someone has been killed.

Plus, the cast is one ritzy name after another which in addition to Kidman includes Liev Schreiber, Dakota Fanning, Eve Hewson (Sisters, Flora and Son), Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus), Jack Reynor (Sing Street, Midsommar) and Billy Howle (On Chesil Beach, The Seagull).

It’s also reminiscent of the soapy 2011 TV show Revenge, thanks to its similar visual palette and its world of rich families and their many, many secrets.

But unlike Big Little Lies or Revenge, The Perfect Couple has not much going on and little momentum. You want to talk about leisurely pacing? Try glacial.

Adapted from a novel by Elin Hilderbrand, we enter the world of the old money Winburys through Amelia (Hewson), a young woman who is about to marry one of the family’s three sons, Benji (Howle).

Amelia doesn’t come from money and finds the Winbury’s ways a little alien, especially matriarch Greer’s (Kidman) demands that she, like everyone else in their orbit, sign non-disclosure agreements.

Greer is a world-famous author, churning out airport novels once a year to pay for the upkeep of the Winburys’ tony lifestyle and Nantucket beach house. Her husband’s multigenerational wealth is all tied up in trusts. Publicly, they are presented as perfect.

Greer also doesn’t approve of Amelia, not so much because she’s not loaded but because she thinks her soon-to-be daughter-in-law hasn’t made enough of an effort to ingratiate herself into the Winburys’ ways. Individualism? No, thank you.

Although it is nice to see Kidman play a character who isn’t just another tortured upper-middle-class woman trying to deal with her trauma. Here, she’s much pricklier and imperious.

Everyone – family, friends, family friends – is gathered for the pending nuptials but the morning of the wedding, the peace is punctuated by a primal scream coming from the beach. There’s a dead body.

The victim’s identity is revealed only at the end of the first episode, while the killer is kept secret until the finale.

In between, there are four episodes where a whole lot of nothing happens. Yes, some backstory and some secrets and betrayals are revealed, but there aren’t enough story beats or even just atmosphere and vibes to sustain six episodes.

There are certainly too many superfluous supporting characters who aren’t very convincing red herrings.

This should have been a movie.

The Perfect Couple? No such thing. The perfect TV series? It certainly isn’t.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Perfect Couple is streaming now on Netflix