Money doesn’t bring happiness, and in the case of Netflix, neither does it create memorable shows.

Elin Hilderbrand, the author of The Perfect Couple, is more or less ironically said to be the “queen” of so-called beach reads. Thus, its adaptation by Netflix into a six-episode mini-series is a “match made in heaven”, as they say. Perhaps even a sort of brand extension to the new season of Emily in Paris, flamboyantly promoted, including a posh rebranding of the Bucharest cult patisserie in Amzei Square, which for a weekend was transformed into a faux bistro à la Paul, but in shades of sherbet, leaving me with a bitter taste of self-colonisation.

But more importantly, and predictably, The Perfect Couple seems to be Netflix’s much-craved answer to The White Lotus. To summarise: a bunch of pretentious and/or problematic rich people on a high-class island, in a setting as Agatha Christie-like as possible – and to be clear, her name is explicitly mentioned so that everyone feels satisfied for catching the obvious reference – are shaken out of their routine by an unexpected murder. Also in a nutshell: while the aforementioned HBO series was much more potent in terms of character development and social commentary (after all, someone has to work and fulfil all their whims), The Perfect Couple mostly gave me the impression of a recent Kenneth Branagh movie, but on a low budget.

Danish director Susanne Bier, another “queen”, but of melodrama, whose filmography includes the much acclaimed After the Wedding, is no stranger to Netflix (see Bird Box) nor to working with Nicole Kidman (see The Undoing), who stars as famous writer of light whodunit novels, much like Hilderbrand herself. But Greer Winbury is more than that: a woman apparently more concerned with her image and success above all, harsh toward her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, the poor, excuse me, Amelia (Eve Hewson, from Robin Hood or Enough Said), she’s more or less bored with Tag (Liev Schreiber), her rich but alcoholic, lazy, and womanising husband, and the more involved parent between them two in the lives of their three sons: the arrogant Tom (Jack Reynor, from Midsommar), the family pride and joy Benji (Billy Howle), and the moody youngest, Will (Sam Nivola, from White Noise). Greer is practically on “red alert”, considering the major events happening in just one day. She accidentally discovers that her husband is cheating (yet again) after finding a bill for an $18,000 bracelet (which, of course, she never received), and the stressful, almost ill-timed wedding of her “precious” son is called off by the death of the maid of honour, Merritt (Meghann Fahy, from The White Lotus).

The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law dynamic, in the first episode, is thus replaced by the “Olympics” of suspicion so characteristic of the genre, and the introduction of the other players, most of them potential murderers, because The Perfect Couple is anything but subtle.

They all seem to have some kind of motive to “take care” of Merritt, who, by the way, is pregnant with Tag’s child. While the “perfect couple”, Greer and Tag, are implied to be potential conspirators, the others don’t escape scrutiny from Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin, from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), a character that very much reminds of the anthology series Fargo, and the local sheriff, Dan Carter (Michael Beach, from Tulsa King), who at first tries to be friendly with the family that donates generously “for the uniform he wears”, but begins to take his job seriously after about three episodes.

The three Winbury boys (Tom, Benji, & Will) are set to receive their share of a trust fund after Will soon turns 18, so a potential newborn would completely ruin their plans – in other words, they’d have to wait until near retirement to enjoy their parents’ wealth.

Tom is the typical “rich kid”, arrogant and ignorant. He constantly makes bad jokes (but no less fitting and sharp: “The last thing poor people need is more sugar”), always needs a loan, and has extramarital affairs. Benji, of all people, has some photos of Merritt in a drawer but reassures Amelia that they were for a portrait Merritt wanted – by the way, Benji is a painter like I’m an engineer at NASA. Will also has a bit of a crush on Merritt, but I’d suspect him the least, no matter how much the script tries to portray him as an unpredictable and emotionally unstable teenager.

Furthermore, the best man, Shooter (Ishaan Khattar), an old friend of Benji’s, for whom Amelia has a particular liking (“An affair is the heart’s way of checking if it’s still alive. The heart’s, or… well, the pussy’s”, is one of the typical French life lessons from Isabel, the family’s eccentric friend, played by Isabelle Adjani), arrives at the wedding in the same cab as Merritt, making him the fourth man possibly romantically involved and blind with jealousy, of course.

The most overdone cliché, however, is that of the housekeeper Gosia (Irina Dubova), a grossly stereotyped Eastern European, secretly in love with macho boomer Tag, and who, during the interrogation, unrealistically gossips about everyone.

Of course, everyone gossips, but the tension and passive-aggressiveness in this “wasp’s nest” are, except for a few moments, wasted and diluted, well, into comedy – both through omnipresent sarcasm and situational humour. One of the best, funny scenes is when Tag, obviously drunk, interrupts Greer’s book launch, hijacking the microphone: “The thing about my wife is she cares. She cares so deeply about her fans that she would like you to know that our marriage is deeply, profoundly, and terminally fucked. So you can all stop comparing yourselves to us… because it’s just a fucking story!”

In the end, for The Perfect Couple to have been even close to “perfect”, it had only three options: either stretch it over multiple seasons and turn it into a crime-time soap, like a kind of Dallas meets Mare of Easttown (that I’d really like to see!), reduce the number of characters for more depth, or focus less on melodrama and more on satire – for example, the attraction between Amelia and Shooter has the vibe of a generic Christmas rom-com on the DIVA channel. Instead, what we got is an “anything-goes” murder for the beach, where, sometimes, it’s more exciting to hear a good joke than serious commentary, both about what happened and especially about the possible cultural and political subtexts of an unfortunate event. The only real aim is to find out who the culprit is and move on to the next book… sorry, the next imperfect TV show.

Mihai Tița

Culture and lifestyle journalist, since 2007. He wrote for Playboy, GQ, FHM, Vice, Dilema veche or Cațavencii, and now is currently a contributor at Scena9 and Mindcraft Stories.