The Perfect Couple: Nicole Kidman’s Opulent Murder Mystery Is A Masterclass In How To Make Tv

This adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel has assembled an astounding cast, shot it gorgeously and perfectly judged its tone. It’s the perfect recipe for brilliant television

You have four choices of TV shows where there has been a mysterious death. It could be a cold town where people don’t trust the police and either a suspect or a detective is preternaturally Scottish; a sleepy English hanging-basket-packed village where there are only two police officers in the entire county and they both somehow call each other “boss”; a detective from out of town who can’t solve the case because they keep thinking about their dead wife or dead child or both; or fabulous opulence, often with Nicole Kidman in the middle. There are subgenres – Poirot on a train, a high school full of weird kids with mental health, Scandinavia – but those are more or less your choices.

To The Perfect Couple, then, a new mysterious death set among fabulous opulence with Nicole Kidman in the middle of it, which unfurls on Netflix from 5 September. It’s based on the 2018 book by “queen of beach reads” Elin Hilderbrand, and I – like you – desperately want to be really snobby about that. But The Perfect Couple has assembled an astounding cast – you’ve got the good actors from The White Lotus (Meghann Fahy), Bad Sisters (Eve Hewson) and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Donna Lynne Champlin), plus Liev Schreiber and Billy “I can’t believe he’s not Domhnall Gleeson” Howle – shot it very gorgeously, made “being wealthy in Nantucket” look very complicated but also very great, got the tone and the tension just right, and deployed Nicole Kidman outstandingly. I mean, that’s how you make TV, isn’t it?