Marriages can be murder but ‘The Perfect Couple’ makes them look gorgeous

The star-studded cast holds this frothy concoction together. Nicole Kidman, that icy queen of everything, delivers a pitch-perfect performance as Greer Garrison Winbury, the imperious matriarch who rules Nantucket, her iron fist clad in designer gloves. Kidman’s Greer is all frosty elegance and cutting remarks. It’s a role the superlative actor could play in her sleep, but Kidman’s delicious iciness is impossible to resist. Opposite her, Liev Schreiber grumbles and grunts through his role as Tag Winbury, Greer’s long-suffering, perpetually stoned husband. Schreiber is the perfect foil to Kidman’s razor-sharpness—a grizzly bear of a man whose hangdog expression screams “someone pass me another joint". He manages to make Tag’s bewildered apathy strangely endearing, the hapless spouse who’s checked out of the drama because, frankly, he has better things to do— like hitting birds with golf balls.

Eve Hewson of Bad Sisters plays the bride, Amelia. Hewson plays wide-eyed terror with a kind of frantic earnestness, navigating the shark-infested waters of her impending nuptials while hailing from an entirely different tax bracket. Hewson captures that sense of feeling perpetually out of place in this world of old wealth and ancient grudges. You can almost see her character counting the zeros on the price tags of everything around her and doing some very anxious mental math.

Our own Ishaan Khatter—who was so good in Meera Nair’s disastrous A Suitable Boy—strides on to the screen as the smouldering, enigmatic Shooter—a young man of considerable mystery and, naturally, wealth. Khatter brings a brooding intensity that manages to cut through the general frivolity of the series. His Shooter is all quiet charisma and dangerous allure, the kind of character who seems perpetually on the verge of a grand revelation—even though this may merely be that you don’t get yellow-enough mustard in Mumbai? More than the role itself, Khatter simmers nicely.

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Those cast as the rich white boys are generically forgettable: the eldest looks like a charmless Chris Pratt, the groom like Domhnall Gleeson minus the talent. Meanwhile Dakota Fanning has a rollicking time as an acerbic pregnant daughter-in-law, while the great Isabelle Adjani shows up as a bewildered aristocrat disgusted by the wine on offer. It’s clear who we are meant to be looking at.

The Perfect Couple embraces its own lack of logic. Characters make decisions that would make a soap opera scriptwriter blush, plots are spun and dropped with the whimsy of a distracted cat, and yet, somehow, none of it matters. The dialogue is peppered with one-liners, the pacing is brisk enough to keep you glued, and the whole thing moves with the unhurried grace of a lazy summer afternoon. This isn’t a show that demands to be dissected for hidden meaning—it’s a glossy, glamorous romp that’s best enjoyed with a generous glass of something bubbly.

Like an extravagantly wrapped present, it’s all about the presentation. This is a show that leans heavily into its lavishness, with each episode feeling like a perfectly crafted Instagram post—filtered, curated, and just detached enough from reality to be intriguing. In a world where every mystery seems to be striving for The White Lotus’s acidic takedown of the rich or Knives Out’s razorsharp plotting, The Perfect Couple is more akin to Apple TV’s The Afterparty—a series so delightfully unserious that it doesn’t matter whodunit, only that you’ve been thoroughly entertained.

So here’s to The Perfect Couple: not a show that will change your life—or even stick in your memory past the weekend—but a glitzy, guilty pleasure that’s well worth its six episodes. Some mysteries are less about the solution and more about the journey, and if that journey includes witty banter, gorgeous vistas, and Nicole Kidman, we’re all for it. Given how well the show is doing, I fear the next big Gujarati wedding may end up heading to Nantucket. Just like those over-opulent shaadis taking over our social media feeds, here too we can’t look away. The real killing is by the designers dressing the women. Wives out.

Streaming tip of the week: Afterparty (Apple TV+) is a whodunit where
every episode is about one suspect’s description of the events leading up to a murder — except that they see the events very differently. So, one episode is a romcom, the next a slasher film. The first season sets the tone, the second is a blast. Give it a shot.

Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.

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