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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
A twisty murder plot packed with secrets, lies, misdirection and cliffhangers. A dazzling coastal setting and stunning interiors. A pensive Nicole Kidman dressed in immaculate tailoring, leading a starry cast. It feels like Netflix’s new series The Perfect Couple has been precision engineered to satiate our collective desire for a glossy, good-looking thriller that’s almost alarmingly easy to watch (and extremely fun to speculate over).
The show, which is based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand, takes us to the glorious beachfront residence of Greer Garrison Winbury, an aloof best-selling novelist played by Kidman, her husband Tag (Liev Schreiber) and their children. The family are gearing up to celebrate the wedding of middle son Benji (Billy Howle) – until a body washes up on the shore outside their home.
The episodes are so moreish that you’d do well to ration it out over any longer than, say, the course of a weekend. If watching it has given you a taste for more suspense-laden sagas of the super-rich, here are some of the best books and TV shows that might just hit the spot.
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
If you squint a little, the Delaney family seems to have it all. One-time tennis coaches Joy and Stan have just sold off their successful business, ready to get down to the task of enjoying a comfortable retirement. Their four grown-up children aren’t quite as settled yet, but they mostly do a decent job of hiding their resentments and neuroses. But then Joy suddenly disappears, prompting years of family tensions to spring to the surface. And could her vanishing act have something to do with the troubled young woman that the couple welcomed into their home the previous year? Apples Never Fall has all of Liane Moriarty’s usual hallmarks – plenty of twists, long buried secrets, a sharp eye for the pretensions of the upper middle classes – so it’s no wonder it’s been adapted for TV. The series stars Annette Bening and Sam Neill as Joy and Stan, and is coming to BBC One.
Published by Penguin and available to stream on BBC iPlayer later this year
The Lagos Wife by Vanessa Walters
Released last year, Vanessa Walters’ thriller has already already been snapped up by HBO, with Insecure writer Amy Aniobi working on a TV series, so expect a starry cast announcement at some point in the near future, too. Nicole Oruwari has left London behind to start a glamorous new existence in Lagos’s expat community, settling into a lavish home with her charming husband and young children. When she doesn’t return from a boat trip and the case seems to be in danger of going cold, her aunt Claudine decides to head to Nigeria to do some sleuthing of her own and peel back the glamorous veneer of her missing niece’s life.
Published by Hutchinson Heinemann
Sandwich by Catherine Newman
If The Perfect Couple’s sweeping Nantucket backdrop has caught your imagination, try the latest book from Catherine Newman, author of We All Want Impossible Things. Rocky and her family have been returning to the same holiday home in Cape Cod for the past 20 summers. Going back to one spot over and over again, though, only seems to highlight how much they’ve changed, and this time, Rocky is hyper-aware of the fact that her children are grown-up and her own parents suddenly seem frail. As their holiday unfolds, secrets inevitably start to emerge (although they’re of a gentler kind than the deaths and affairs of The Perfect Couple).
Published by Doubleday
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
The debut novel from Miranda Cowley Heller, previously a hotshot TV executive who worked on shows such as The Sopranos and The Wire, boasts the paciness of a beach-friendly page turner but also has some real literary heft. This one’s also set on Cape Cod, albeit in a crumbling cabin in the woods rather than an immaculate beachfront pile. Over the course of one day, Elle Bishop must make a decision that could change her life. Before that, though, she attempts to untangle decades’ worth of family secrets and lies, and grapple with the troubling legacy of a traumatic incident that scarred her teenage years.
Published by Penguin
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
This absorbing family saga presents an alternately sympathetic and sharply satirical take on the lives of New York’s 0.01 per cent, told through the perspectives of three very different family members. Darley was born into money and has lived a life of WASP-y privilege, growing up in a sprawling townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, but her refusal to sign a pre-nup before her marriage has put her on a different path. Her idealistic younger sister Georgiana feels weighed down by her fortune. And the world of tennis clubs and tablescapes is entirely foreign to their sister-in-law Sasha, who can’t seem to learn how to navigate its intricate social rules (or how to melt her mother-in-law’s froideur).
Published by Penguin
The White Lotus
Before she was The Perfect Couple’s party-loving influencer Merritt Monaco, Meghann Fahy caught our attention as the enigmatic trophy wife Daphne in The White Lotus. Each season of writer and director Mike White’s show takes place at a different outpost of a high-end hotel chain; each time, we’re introduced to a (mostly) new cohort of horrifyingly, hilariously entitled wealthy guests who tend to be on the run from everything that’s wrong with their everyday lives – and also meet the long-suffering staff who must tend to their whims. First, White took us to Hawaii; next, the action shifted to Sicily. A third season, set in Thailand, is coming to Sky Atlantic and Now next year, which is as good an excuse as any to revisit or catch up with the first two series (you’ll find them streaming on Now).
Available to stream on Now
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
It’s the book and TV show that arguably set the blueprint for the current incarnation of the domestic noir. Big Little Lies delves into the tangled private lives of a group of wealthy mothers – spikey Madeline, the seemingly perfect Celeste and struggling single mum Jane – who are eventually brought together by a shocking crime. The HBO adaptation, which debuted back in 2017 and starred Reese Witherspoon and Kidman, is a masterclass in how to do prestige TV, with an A-list cast, sharp one-liners and an addictive mystery at its heart (and very few of its imitators have managed to live up to its standards since).
Published by Penguin and available to stream on Now
The Guest by Emma Cline
Alex, 22, is spending the summer at a luxurious vacation home in Long Island – at the behest of a rich man 30 years her senior. When their “arrangement” comes to an awkward end, Alex is presented with a one-way ticket back to the city, but she decides instead to stay where she is, blagging her way into the confidences of the wealthy people she meets in a haphazard manner that can surely only end in disaster. The follow-up to Emma Cline’s hit The Girls is both propulsive and strangely haunting, with Alex both bewitched and repulsed by the excessive displays of affluence that she dips in and out of.
Published by Vintage
