Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber lead a spoiled household in a foolish homicide thriller restricted sequence.
Plot: Amelia Sacks is about to marry into one of many wealthiest households on Nantucket. Her disapproving future mother-in-law, well-known novelist Greer Garrison Winbury, has spared no expense in planning what guarantees to be the premiere wedding ceremony of the season — till a physique turns up on the seaside. As secrets and techniques come to gentle, the stage is about for a real-life investigation that feels plucked from the pages of one in every of Greer’s novels. Out of the blue, everyone seems to be a suspect.
Assessment: There are such a lot of marquee sequence to select from today that it may be insufferable making an attempt to resolve what to observe. From star-studded, acclaimed initiatives that win numerous awards and lift the bar for what long-form storytelling can do to big-budget spectacles that rival the most important summer season blockbuster, there may be an possibility for each style. However, whereas there’s a time and a spot for a sublime meal of wonderful delicacies, typically you desire a greasy cheeseburger. It’s satisfying and rapid however holds no profit in the long term. That’s precisely what The Excellent Couple is. The most recent within the line of soapy drama sequence that Nicole Kidman has headlined during the last decade, The Excellent Couple is a mix of thriller whodunit with the wealth-porn that has been the core of sequence like Yellowstone and Succession. A surprisingly humorous restricted sequence with a very advanced sequence of twists, The Excellent Couple is simply too ridiculous for its personal good.
Set on the ultra-rich beachfront of Nantucket, The Excellent Couple facilities on the nuptials of Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) to Benji Winbury (Billy Howle), the center little one of best-selling novelist Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman) and her generationally rich husband Tag (Liev Schreiber). Coming from a middle-class household, Amelia is just not accustomed to the lifetime of the one-percent Winbury clan, together with eldest son Thomas (Jack Reynor) and youngest Will (Sam Nivola). Because the preparations are made for Amelia and Benji’s wedding ceremony, a homicide places all the clan right into a suspect pool together with Thomas’ spouse Abby (Dakota Fanning), Benji’s greatest pal Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khattar), Amelia’s greatest pal and well-known influencer Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), household pal Isabel (Isabelle Adjani), and even the police chief’s daughter, Chloe (Mia Isaac). As Chief Carter (Michael Seashore) and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) examine the homicide, secrets and techniques and lies start to unravel, involving each single member of the household and their interior circles.
Over six episodes, the police investigation reveals so many issues that the majority sequence would have wanted twice as many episodes to handle. As a result of The Excellent Couple crams them right into a half dozen chapters, you hardly ever get by an episode with out altering your suspect checklist a number of instances. There are extramarital affairs, medication, hush cash, medication, consuming, dishonest, medication, and the occasional social media meltdown to maintain the family members at one another’s throats, figuratively and actually. The place a sequence like Succession mined the verbal abuse lobbed between characters for satirical worth, The Excellent Couple appears not sure whether or not it desires to mock the protagonists. Liev Schreiber performs Tag as a perpetually stoned patriarch who’s unaware of the gravity of what’s taking place round him and shifts from a determine of prominence to virtually a spoof of himself by the top of the sequence. Jack Reynor and Dakota Fanning are excellent at enjoying spoiled brat adults, whereas Meghann Fahy does strong work in a job that echoes her activate The White Lotus. Isabelle Adjani chews the surroundings in a supporting position that can hopefully drive many to take a look at her illustrious filmography, which exhibits how a lot nice work she has achieved.
The largest roles on this sequence belong to Eve Hewson and Nicole Kidman. Kidman appears to be spending extra of her time engaged on sequence like this than ever earlier than, with The Excellent Couple becoming proper alongside Large Little Lies and 9 Excellent Strangers as one other position as an prosperous mom and spouse whose life is upended by a loss of life. Kidman is sweet right here, as she normally is, however this can be the shallowest of her small-screen main roles in recent times. Seeing her play off of the actors who painting her household is entertaining, particularly when she is reverse Eve Hewson. Hewson, who had a breakout position in The Knick, Dangerous Sisters, and final 12 months’s Flora and Son, is among the few characters not born into wealth on this sequence and sees the rotten core she is getting ready to marry into. Kidman and Hewson have two of the least humorous roles within the sequence, which has so many jokes that it made me surprise if this was a drama that was alleged to be humorous or {a partially} dramatic comedy. It’s so inconsistently dealt with that it undermines the entire sequence’s tone.
Primarily based on the e book by best-selling novelist Elin Hildebrand, The Excellent Couple was the author’s first thriller after a profitable profession in romance novels. Created by Resident Alien actress Jenna Lamia, who wrote or co-wrote all six episodes, The Excellent Couple has a heavy dose of humor that appears at odds with the darkish material. The entire sequence was directed by Susanne Bier, who has achieved phenomenal work with the movie Fowl Field and the dramatic sequence The Night time Supervisor. Bier reunites with Nicole Kidman, whom she directed in The Undoing, one other story of a household torn aside by a heinous crime. Whereas Bier’s earlier efforts centered on the characters and the strain of the driving crime, she appears a bit misplaced within the humor on this adaptation. Enjoying any of this material as a pitch-black comedy would have been a route, however every thing is so gentle and breezy that it by no means feels just like the stakes are actual. The huge Bollywood-esque dance quantity that serves because the opening credit score sequence for the sequence is the proper assertion of how manufactured and pretend this story is.
There are a whole lot of moments on this sequence, particularly all the remaining episode, the place I used to be laughing on the jokes the characters had been delivering. I used to be not laughing as a result of they had been notably humorous however due to how misplaced they felt in comparison with the subject material. Inside any sequence of this sequence are scenes wherein half the actors are enjoying them as comedy, and the others are enjoying them as critical, virtually as if they’re in two completely different exhibits. The restricted run of six episodes additionally implies that so many components launched by the sequence find yourself serving little or no function on the present’s finish. The Excellent Couple is anticlimactic and underwhelming, even when it appears to be like like everybody concerned had a whole lot of enjoyable making it. You’ll definitely not have as a lot enjoyable watching it.
The Excellent Couple premieres on September fifth on Netflix.
