Tell Me Lies Netflix, Tell Me Big (little) Lies About How Good Your Next Limited Season Is Gonna Be…

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. And occasionally it’s about Netflix which is sometimes in the middle of both and often of a lower quality than either

You know, it wasn’t that long ago — just around six months back — that I had a frustrated whinge about the style of Netflix show that has been getting hurtled out the door ever since Big Little Lies did the numbers. Big Little Lies was good because it was a genuine ensemble piece, smart enough to not be dumb, and just silly enough to know it was about the performances as much as it was about it being any sort of clever. It featured one hell of a performance by Nicole Kidman, but it was possibly more important that Reece Witherspoon was in there — since all she touches turns to gold, especially when it comes to book adaptations. And then, better yet, put Laura Dern in the damn thing (which they did). Laura Dern will always eat everything up. She’s just that good always.

But, yeah, anyway, back to six months ago. I never sat through all of Apples Never Fall and wasn particularly glad that I didn’t even if it barely sounded like it:

In that piece directly above, I also mentioned silly old Nine Perfect Strangers — which really existed to say that person that wrote Big Little Lies has another, and we got Nicole Kidman back for it! It had a thin slice of an idea, and a really decent ensemble, but went absolutely nowhere, dragging its audience with it. These things feel dumber the more you think about them after; you feel dumber the more you think about yourself watching them, after you’ve watched them…

It’s so easy to munch up these hideous TV snacks, only to spit out disgusting phrases like It’s so easy to munch up these hideous TV snacks…

A common phrase is something along the lines of ‘it was an easy watch’. If I want background TV, I’ll watch something I’ve seen before (a classic, re-watchable movie) or some YouTube interview content or clips from various actor highlights, or a music doco of a band I already know inside out. If I get caught saying something was ‘an easy watch’ I feel like I’m only a step away from having a blanket over my knee and a TV dinner as I move back in with my folks.

Not everything should be challenging. Sometimes at the end of a tough week moving words around a page, or putting piles of money into different positions, or juggling shoeboxes, or stacking road cones somewhere, or selling whatever needs to be sold, or doesn’t really need to be sold but is available, or you know, whatever it is any of us do, sometimes the end-result, the end-product, the end-goal, the hope for the weekend…is a trashy bit of fun, low-key televisual entertainment. Absolutely. There is most definitely nothing wrong with that.

But as I sat down on Friday night to watch The Latest Netflix Limited Series Starring Nicole Kidman (unbelievably it wasn’t even called that — it was actually called The Perfect Couple, trailer at the top) I think I knew I was not in for Masterpiece Theatre. What I didn’t quite know immediately, but jolly well did by episode three, was that I’d devour the whole bloody thing across the weekend and think about what a piece of shit I was for bothering to do that almost immediately after.

One can watch whatever they like, after all. But one should not stoop to something that is so cynical and baiting as to basically be a parody of all that the network serves up when it’s trying the least.

The Perfect Couple features Liev Schrieber and Nicole Kidman as the wealthy parents of a family where a wedding is about to happen, but, of course, there’s been a murder. We’ll flash forward and back from there, naturally, and everyone will be a suspect. And the one least likely to ever be involved at all really…will really be involved. No. Really. And, yeah, it’s basically some sort of Apples Never Fall as viewed through the lens of the Mama Mia musicals, only fortunately there are no big musical numbers, save for an incongruous, nearly Bollywood-aping opening credits sequence which is scored to Meghan Trainor. Yeah.

You can power through all six episodes of The Perfect Couple in two sittings. But does that mean you should? Hell, some people probably did it with just the one adult diaper attached and went all in across a single evening with a quick stop for some barley sugars.

But, fuck. Why?

I was angry by late on Saturday night and had to watch the brilliant, charming, lovely, and sweet Thelma immediately after. To wash some of the taste away.

I read the Stephen King short story Rattlesnakes, which is devastating and funny and clever and quite possibly profoundly wise, and just a damn good time. And I thought about how I need to always be reading more short stories. And how that’s a better use of anyone’s time, certainly mine.

And much as I like to think I won’t get fooled again, in six months time there’ll be another trace around of the Big Little Lies plot, or its marketing, or a cast that resembles it, or a pitch that (further) reduces it, or, well, you know…the Oprah’s Book Club of Netflix for those that experienced another privileged but tiring week at whatever coalface they’re still lucky to be at.

This can’t even serve as the warning it would hope to be. Netflix has my “money”, my click, it’s taken my time. It might have already had yours too, and you’ll still give it your time even after reading this, if only to argue that it didn’t matter that the murderer was neither logical nor credible and so what if the murder contained zero traces of motive.

Because remember that nonsense about somewhere like a gym or a bar or a cafe or whatever being the Third Place? That place you went to that was not home and was not work but felt familiar and good and decent and rewarding in some way? Netflix wants to be that. But also stealthily, conveniently is already in your home. It’s the Third Place that burgled its way into your actual First Place (your home). And for some people it threatens to take them away (in some sense) from the Second Place (their work). And not in the good (temporary escapist) way but in the binge-watching, blurry (if not bleary) eyed, distracted and phoning-in-sick-to-get-more-of-the-drug kind of way.

Netflix is a joke, and a curse, and a lazy option most of the time. And its cruel true crime docos that trade on misery, misogyny, misanthropy and missing empathy, and its trace-around limited series’ are its worst offenders. The ones doing the biggest numbers for it. Of course. By the time they’re over you can move on and feel like you haven’t invested too much of yourself (if you hated it) or you can find another one straight away (if you loved it). It’s calculated and the saddest part is I’ll never cancel my subscription. And will write something like this again before the end of this year. And two or three times next year too.