"The Perfect Couple"

This post contains no spoilers.

Last night Linda and I decided to eschew the Pirates-Yankees game, a game, inconceivably, won by the Pirates, and have a Movie Night instead.  The movie we chose was "The Perfect Couple", based upon the best selling beach read book by Elin Hilderbrand, and a movie about which we had heard good things.  When we tuned into our Netflix app, we found out that it wasn't a movie, but, rather, a six part mini-series.  

Okay, we said, we'll watch two episodes and see where it takes us.  We started at 7:00, and after two episodes, we said let's watch another one, and, well, you can guess where we went from there.  Five hours later, shortly after midnight, we wrapped up Episode Six and the entire series.  That alone should tell you that we liked this one and found it to be quite entertaining.

The story takes place in Nantucket Island.  A wedding is about to take place among the monied beautiful people of the Island.  The groom-to-be is Benji Winbury, the middle of three sons of Tag and Greer Winbury.  Tag is the heir to a family fortune that had been largely squandered and is now tied up in a trust fund that will fall to and be split among the three sons when the youngest reaches age 18.  Tag doesn't do much of anything except smoke weed, drink a lot, cheat on Greer, and hit golf balls into the Nantucket Sound.  Greer is a best selling mystery novelist who churns out a book a year, the proceeds of which is what keeps the Winbury family fortune humming.  The bride-to-be is Amelia Sachs, a lovely young woman, who is from the mid-west and does not come from a family with generational wealth.  She clearly does not fit in with the Winburys and their entitled circle.

On the night before the wedding, after an extremely ostentatious rehearsal dinner on the Winbury Estate, a death is discovered.  Was it an accident?  Well, of course it wasn't. It turns out to have been a murder, otherwise, we wouldn't have a six part mini-series.  The story unfolds and is told in flashbacks throughout as the local police chief and a state police detective wend their way through all of the hinky doings that have led up to and surround the death of maid-of-honor Meredith.   There are sexual betrayals galore, and, of course, money and entitlement play a huge part of the story.

The cast is terrific, but standing out among the ensemble are Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber as  Greer and Tag, 

and Dakota Fanning, who plays Abby, the pregnant wife of the eldest Winbury son and whom I just finished watching in "Ripley", and Eve Hewson, daughter of U2 lead singer Bono, who plays bride-to-be Amelia.

Hewson's Amelia is sympathetic and likable; Fanning's Abby, not so much.  In fact, most of the characters are not very likable.  As I said at one point as we watched,  this is the kind of a show where you sort of hope that everyone in it either gets arrested or dies.  Chief among them is Jack Reynor who plays Tom Winbury, the eldest son and Abby's husband.  THAT character is a jagoff supreme.

Anyway, we really liked the series and highly recommend it.  Maybe you won't do it all in one sitting as we did, but if you like seeing a a good murder mystery, with beautiful scenery and beautiful costumes on beautiful people, this show is for you. 

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, I promised no spoilers, and I didn't give any, but I did drop one big clue in this write-up.  Maybe you'll pick up on it once you start watching.