Greer Garrison Winbury gets some supposedly sage but implicitly questionable marital advice from her mother on the morning of her wedding in Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel, “The Perfect Couple.”
“The most important skill required in marriage was picking one’s battles. Make sure they’re ones you can win,” her mother tells her.
In a marriage, there’s a tension that exists between the outward facing facade the rest of the world sees and a relationship’s internal and war-like workings. This is the force that drives both Hilderbrand’s novel and the Netflix TV series adaptation of the same name. That and the big-name cast, exclusive setting and luxuries of unimaginable, multi-generational wealth.
The combination of murder mystery meets high society in an exotic coastal location is not a revelation, and the show has elements and cast members from both “Big Little Lies” and “The White Lotus.” However, the six-part series is neither a prestige drama nor a satire. Instead, the show is its own escapist, highly bingeable delight. Its enjoyability and No. 1 spot in Netflix’s Top 10, is also a reminder of how much we all crave a good “beach read” (or its television equivalent), and it’s time to stop pretending that’s a bad thing.
“The Perfect Couple” stars Nicole Kidman as Greer Garrison Winbury, the matriarch of her obscenely wealthy and highly dysfunctional family. The limited series opens with idyllic scenes of summer in Nantucket, the small, exclusive Massachusetts island to the south of Cape Cod, where all of Hilderbrand’s books are set. There is plentiful sunshine, a sandy beach, a whale breaching the blue Atlantic water, and a scrolling script inviting viewers to escape into this dreamy world.
“You are invited to Benji & Amelia’s Rehearsal Dinner,” the text reads before zooming into a white party tent on the beachfront estate (aptly named Summerland) of Greer and Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber).
Within the first few lines of…
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