How Netflix's The Perfect Couple redefines the 'mother thriller' genre

Nicole Kidman has played her fair share of memorable mothers, but her latest role might be her most notable yet.

In the new hit series The Perfect Couple, she returns to familiar on-screen circumstances as the matriarch of one of the wealthiest families in Nantucket. When her son's wedding is ruined after a murder is uncovered, however, secrets are revealed — and everyone in attendance becomes a suspect.

Today on Commotion, Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi tells host Elamin Abdelmahmoud what the show adds to the "mother thriller" genre, and why it's an unlikely — but welcome — comedic entry in the self-serious world of women's entertainment.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Let's set up the world that we're in a little bit, okay? The Perfect Couple is based on an Elin Hilderbrand novel. Like a lot of her books, it's set on Nantucket, a real island, you know? Talk to me about Nantucket and how it kind of plays a role in the show.

Roxana: Yeah, so Nantucket is in New England. It is 30 miles south of Cape Cod, so we're talking about the Boston area — very historical, and a major summer destination for tourism. So Nantucket basically becomes overrun by very wealthy summer tourists. And you know that from real life because home sales are averaging, like, $2-3 million, because it's an island, right? There isn't that much space to live.

Elamin: Not a lot of real estate, yeah.

Roxana: So a lot of Hilderbrand's novels take place in this space. She did move to Nantucket in the early '90s, and I think she does this excellent job building this place where everybody sort of knows each other. Everybody sort of knows how much money everyone else has. There's a lot of really beautiful descriptions of seafood feasts and flower gardens, and also a lot of really fun backstabbing and infidelity and domestic drama.

So you get that all in the novels, right? And then you're really getting that in this Netflix adaptation where Nicole Kidman's character is the matriarch of this family. On one hand, she is complaining about the hydrangeas in the garden over and over — she hates these hydrangeas — but she also is really worried about how people view her family, right? There's a lot of secrecy and concern. So, yeah, I think that you really get a sense of class and infighting, but with a little bit of a different tone from how we've seen these shows handle this before.

Elamin: I want to talk about a category that you coined: the genre of "mother thriller," which is to describe all these prestige shows that we're getting that are centered around mothers…. Do you want to talk about how The Perfect Couple falls into this category?

Roxana: I will say, all kudos to my editors for coming up with this term, for which I was describing many tropes and clichés. But it all goes back to Big Little Lies, right? Big Little Lies exploded on the scene in this very rarefied world of mostly white women dealing with a murder.

Elamin: It has Nicole Kidman, and Reese Witherspoon. 

Roxana: And Laura Dern, all these very recognizable faces. And that really set off a trend of Liane Moriarty adaptations, and just series that dealt with some similar things, right? These women are rich, but they're unhappy. There's definitely a murder. There's always a murder.

Elamin: There's got to be a murder, yes.

Roxana: And the way that we uncover the murder is through a very flashback-heavy narrative, so you're unpeeling different layers of people's identities. And I definitely think The Perfect Couple fits into that. We do get the flashbacks to seeing what happened on the night before this wedding that led to a murder, right? What are the secret dynamics between these people? How are they lying to each other? How are they lying to themselves? 

And as we discussed earlier, there's a lot of wealth here, right? It is a mansion on the beach in which Nicole Kidman and her husband, played by Liev Schreiber, live very easily with the domestic staff, right? So all of these elements are there, in a slightly different formula, I would say, than Big Little Lies or Apples Never Fall or the other shows that we've gotten in this genre.

Elamin: The White Lotus is in that category. Something that you wrote about The Perfect Couple, though, is that it's a relief to watch it subvert some of the tropes that we're seeing in this genre. Why does it feel like a relief to watch this show?

Roxana: I think sometimes these shows almost feel like they are ashamed of their component parts, right? They're a little bit worried about being just seen as women's entertainment, so I think a lot of these shows also are very self-serious. There's a very almost, like, somber tone where the shows are sort of begging to be taken seriously, right? They're about feminism, and domestic abuse, and sexism, and all these things that are incredibly valid. I don't want to say that television shouldn't deal with these themes.

Elamin: Let's make shows about those issues, yes.

Roxana: Yeah. But they're, like, capital-letters "handled," right? There's no room for fun or levity. But I think The Perfect Couple really understands that being a woman is difficult, but also it means that you can be a woman who goes through her future sister-in-law's wedding gifts and steals the ones that she likes. There is a little bit of space for, like, ludicrous look-at-how-the-rich-people-live, and that's just fun. I think I like that.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Roxana Hadadi produced by Jane van Koeverden.