Netflix’s The Perfect Couple is easy-on-the-eye nonsense

The Perfect Couple is an exemplar of that genre sometimes cynically known as “poverty programming:” dramas that train all of us non-billionaire folk to be content with our miserable lot by showing us that even if we did have lots more money we’d actually really hate it.

They’re all secretly messed up, treacherous and unfaithful, riddled with hatred, and popping pills

It’s set on Nantucket Island, where the streets are cobbled and the old-moneyed families gather every summer to polish their bijou antique rowing boats at their beachside mansions which, I just checked, cost around $20 million. Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber) and his bestselling romantic novelist wife (Nicole Kidman), happily married for twenty-nine years, are about to host the wedding of their delightful blonde son Benji (Billy Howle) to the dark-haired girl of his dreams Amelia (Eve Hewson).

But it’s OK, don’t worry, even though they drive huge cars, parade around the lawns in matching bathrobes, drink endless champagne and have a fiercely loyal Russian housekeeper Gosia (Irina Dubova) to attend to their every need, they’re all secretly messed up, treacherous and unfaithful, riddled with hatred and jealousy, popping prescription pills — oh, and at least one of them is a murderer.

Though we know the victim is female — because we hear her screams — we don’t get to see her identity till the end of the first episode, so I won’t spoil it. But we see some of the characters who it isn’t turning up afterwards to be interviewed at the police station. Among them is almost-bride Amelia (who has evidently seen something so disturbing it has driven her insane); Roger (Tim Bagley), a gossipy, snobby wedding planner who seems to model himself on Gore Vidal (“They’re ‘I’m bored — let’s go buy a monkey’ rich… ‘Kill someone and get away with it’ rich,” he tells the cops); and Isabelle Adjani, as the family’s super-rich Eurotrash friend from France, spraying her Gallic venom on everyone and everything.

You’ve watched variants on this show many times before, but if you were hoping for this to be the next The White Lotus, I’m afraid it’s closer to being Big Little Lies. That is, while it’s enjoyable, polished, well-acted, sinuous, easy-on-the-eye, dirty-secrets-of-the-rich nonsense, it’s not quite in the realm of must-see genius.

There’s not enough quirkiness among the dramatis personae: they’re just a collection of pre-assigned attributes — the scheming ruthless matriarch, the jealous failure elder son, the saucy bf etc — whose main job is to provide different possible motivations for the murder. And the social satire just isn’t as sharp or well observed or catty.

When, for example, Amelia’s parents turn up — genial bear of a dad, mom in a wig because she’s having chemo — it’s made that little bit too obvious that they are below the salt, with their shabby clothes and dad’s too- eager bonhomie. It would have been funnier if it had been more subtle — which reminds me of the other major flaw of this series: a quite desperate shortage of wit or humor.

Meanwhile, I have a question about the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral: in the real-life incident on October 26, 1881, did the baddies and the goodies really approach one another in a line abreast face-off until the first one went for his pistol and the quickest ones on the draw won? I’m presuming it was just movie embellishment and that almost nothing we’ve ever seen on screen about the Wild West — if it even existed — was remotely close to the truth. Whatever, I suppose I shall find out soon enough in Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War, a Netflix dramatized documentary series which I’m enjoying very much so far. One new thing I’ve learned already is that “cowboy” was originally a pejorative and specific term: it referred to members of a gang of outlaws headed by Ike Clanton, who specialized in cattle-rustling over the US/Mexican border. They were identifiable by the rattler-skin bands round their hats.

While it’s enjoyable, polished and easy-on-the-eye nonsense, it’s not quite in the realm of must-see genius

Their nemesis was Wyatt Earp (whom John Wayne once met and modeled his characters on), a powerful man of few words, very handy with his fists, who enforced the law — overseen by the sheriff, who took more of an administrative role — in Tombstone, Arizona, with his two brothers. Earp’s best friend was a drunkard named Doc Holliday, who had quit his successful job as a city dentist, moved out west and taken up whisky drinking in a bid to cure his tuberculosis. They bonded after Holliday, seeing a ruffian about to shoot Earp in the back, drew his pistol and shot the bad guy first.

Anyway, it seems that the gunfight was not the end of the story but almost the beginning. There were reprisals, and counter-reprisals. The fighting dragged on and on, apparently jeopardizing the entire US economy — something to do with silver, the railroads, and the massive debts inherited from the Civil War — and drew in such notables as J.P. Morgan, the future Edward VII and Lord Rothschild. I’m still not sure how far I trust the details. But it makes for a cracking good yarn.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.