Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Is there nowhere safe for elites on screen these days? Going by the number of recent series featuring deaths in luxury hotels, exclusive residences, private jets and superyachts, the ultra-wealthy are accounting for a high percentage of TV fatalities. Now The Perfect Couple, a starry new Netflix mini-series, begins with a body washing up on the private beach of veritable Nantucket royalty.Meet the Winburys, a family who live off trust funds and get by with lies. While you could easily cut the tension between haughty matriarch Greer (Nicole Kidman) and layabout husband Tag (Liev Schreiber) with an ornate oyster-shucking knife, they and their three sons are well practised in maintaining appearances. Just as important as looking the part is knowing when to look the other way as indiscretions and ignominies threaten to shatter the polished facade.This is why Greer is concerned that her middle child Benji (Billy Howle) is about to marry an outsider. Amelia (Eve Hewson) doesn’t know how to crack a lobster, much less handle the intricacies of maintaining a public image. As a zoologist with an expertise in snakes, she is, however, no stranger to the venom which her disapproving mother-in-law-to-be spits her way.Might Greer be capable of more than menacing insinuations and frosty glares? After the corpse is found on the morning of the wedding, morbid suspicions spread and sordid secrets emerge. Running alongside the Winburys’ attempts to control the narrative and the police’s efforts to challenge it are flashbacks and interrogation scenes which shift perspectives and keep us wondering whodunnit.But we also find ourselves repeatedly wondering if we haven’t seen all this before. The moneyed setting and murder-mystery set-up cannot help but evoke Big Little Lies (also starring Kidman) and The White Lotus even if this show possesses neither the emotional heft of the former nor the keen wit of the latter. The show seems to have little to add on the topics of privilege, pride, perception or family.And yet while the plot is pulpy, the characters contrived and the satire unsubtle, there is enough talent in front and behind the camera (Susanne Bier directs; Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy and Jack Reynor round off a strong ensemble) to make The Perfect Couple an enjoyable late summer indulgence.★★★☆☆On Netflix now
