Nicole Kidman wafts around in statement separates, playing a wealthy matriarch with a dysfunctional family and a dark secret. That’s a potted description of her character in current Netflix hit The Perfect Couple . Unfortunately, it also sums up the rest of Kidman’s TV parts over the past decade.
Viewers of The Perfect Couple – and it spent most of September as the streamer’s most-viewed show, so there are plenty of them – can be forgiven for feeling a nagging sense of déjà vu and hurriedly googling to check they haven’t binged this box set before. Her headline turn is just the latest in a long line of cookie cutter Kidman roles. Why has a five-time Oscar nominee typecast herself as inscrutable heroines in kitchen island dramas? Kidman’s Waspy midlife wife era began in 2017, with school gates mystery Big Little Lies .
This glossy, gripping psychological thriller followed a group of yummy mummies in the Californian coastal enclave of Monterey, who become embroiled in a murder investigation. Kidman rightly won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her gut-wrenching portrayal of lawyer Celeste, whose smug Sunday supplement lifestyle concealed an abusive relationship with her violent husband (Alexander Skarsgård). This was followed by The Undoing , in which Kidman played a moneyed Manhattan psychotherapist.
Again, she was married to a wrong ’un – in this case, dashing oncologist Hugh Grant , who may or may not have been a philandering murderer in his spare t.
