It would be an easy review to dismiss Netflix's latest expose on Nicole Kidman's latest plastic surgery as stupid.
Because it is.
Unlike Ms. Kidman's sculpted body and face, the six-episode (Thank God) series is a bloated soap opera. It spends six hours on so much Agatha Christie misdirection that two hours in you know exactly who the viewer is being misdirected away from.
There are no noble characters.
There are, of course, the usual infusions of gay influencers, self-indulgent narcissists, decent beleaguered POC (and townie women of course), alcoholics, and rich Whitey assholes in such large supply, you end up cheering for the last demographic on the list. Geez, could Netflix get any more transparent in self-contempt?
If not for the rich, Whitey assholes that run the streaming service there would be no rich, Whitey assholes to mock on screen.
In brief, Nicole Kidman is Greer Winbury, the tight-ass matriarch of a Nantucket household of ne'er-do-well sons, creepy daughters-in-law, and sycophantic family friends. Her drunken, pot-smoking husband, played by the still unshaven Liev Schreiber, hasn't worked in decades and spends most of the episode chasing annoying doyennes, underage skanks, and the aforementioned sycophantic family friends.
Greer is a writer of lousy, derivative popular fiction. The series goes so far as to stage a book launch from the 1980s, and a wedding from the 90s. Both events are trashed by circumstance, and no one is saddened by the delayed nuptials nor the latest entry in the James Patterson Hall of Lousy Reading.
Even when the obligatory dead body is discovered, the viewer hopes the carnage extends to the entire Winbury family and their annoying two-dimensional guests.
The murderer is eventually revealed leading to gasps of "Really? That's who bumped off the Tik-Tok Twit? Can we give the killer an award?"
Should the perp get such acknowledgement, it will be the only one earned by this abysmal attempt at Victorian drawing-room suspense.
Zero Stars. Don't bother.
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