Review: 'The Perfect Couple' is Netflix's dumbed-down 'White Lotus'

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'The Bear,' 'Only Murders,' and more of this summer's hottest TV shows

USA TODAY TV critic Kelly Lawler lists this summer's must-see TV shows, including the return of "The Bear" and "Only Murders in the Building."

You know exactly what you're getting when you sit down to watch "The Perfect Couple."

Netflix's latest limited series has a seemingly, ahem, perfect recipe: Beautiful Nantucket beaches, an attractive young cast; a frothy 2018 Elin Hilderbrand novel as its source material; a mysterious death to investigate; terrible rich people to boo; and Nicole Kidman with a bad wig. It's going for "Big Little Lies" on the East Coast, or maybe "White Lotus" for New England WASPs. Or perhaps it's "The Undoing" with brighter lighting. Whatever it is, it certainly aspires to be the kind of addictive, soapy, whodunit drama akin to these successful series that have taken over the zeitgeist over the past few years.

"Perfect Couple" (now streaming, ★★½ out of four) feels like it's made from a bunch of pieces of different series, and it's quite telling. The series is a bit of a mishmash and at times, a very unfocused story that would probably have been better off with fewer episodes, or just a movie with all the excess fluff trimmed out. Too many modern TV series waste viewers' time; they're frustrating "slow burns" that take forever to get to the good stuff if there's any good stuff at all. "Couple," by contrast, is good at its start and fantastic at the end but drags painfully between, a fluffy doughnut with bland filling.

But it's still a doughnut: Chewy, gooey and fun.

"Couple" takes place at a picturesque Nantucket mansion owned by the blue-blooded Winbury family, led by its ice-cold matriarch and bestselling author Greer (Kidman) and weed-smoking layabout patriarch Tag (Liev Schreiber). They're hosting a blowout wedding for their son Benji (Billy Howle) and his very middle-class fiancé Amelia (Eve Hewson of Apple's excellent "Bad Sisters"). But the seaside soiree is interrupted when a body is discovered on the beach. Now all the dirty little secrets of this seemingly perfect family (filled with perfect-looking couples) come out into the open.

The cast is worth far more than the material they're given, including "Lotus" alum (and Emmy nominee) Meghann Fahy as the party-girl maid of honor and Dakota Fanning as an unambiguously awful future sister-in-law to the bride. Fanning at times appears to be the only one who realizes what kind of series she's in, and her unserious mean-girl vibe is a delectable treat. You'll love to hate her and hate to love her for her snide comments and the time she takes a lick from someone else's wedding cake.

Without revealing who died or how (at Netflix's request), it's hard to talk about the plot other than to say it often makes little sense. A slew of disparate threads that might relate to the central mystery but are quickly resolved. There aren't enough red herrings to make it a whodunit that begs the audience to guess the killer (if there is one). Plus it is extremely frustrating that the procedural elements move at a glacial pace, from the police looking up things as simple as phone records all the way in Episode 5 to the press being uninterested in a mysterious death on the property of a famous and wealthy family until weeks later.

Still, the ending is juicy and genuinely surprising, part of a finale episode that is rollicking good time. If only its melodramatic, borderline ridiculous tone could have been replicated in each of the installments. It's clear that creator Susanne Bier ("The Undoing") attempted it, down to the opening credits that feature the cast in a choreographed dance to "Criminals" by Meghan Trainor. It's practically begging for a TikTok trend (if the kids don't deem it too "cringe").

Hilderbrand is known for her quick and satisfying "beach reads," and "Couple" might have been better served if it had been released over a lazy hot summer weekend when binge-watching six hours of an OK-bordering-on-good show seemed like the best use of time. During a busy September with dozens of new and returning series vying for our attention, it might not feel worth it.

After all, nothing is really perfect.