The problem with any new Netflix series is that it can be hard to know what you’re signing up for. The perfect couple. The lead roles are played by Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber. There is murder in it. It is about a rich family. But what kind of Nicole Kidman show is this? Is this “Actually this is serious”, as Expatsor is it a Big little lies melodrama? Maybe it’s more of a Nine Perfect Strangers the feeling of a soap opera?

One way to figure that out is to watch the opening credits, because the opening credits of a TV show set the tone. And in the case of The perfect couplewhat the opening credits seem to imply is that someone had a head injury. Or took a hallucinogen? Or a frustrated choreographer who somehow got the job as opening credits coordinator for this netflix show and just took the tools he had? Or just wanted to have fun!

To set the scene: at the premiere of The perfect couplecalled “Happy Wedding Eve,” the opening scenes paint a beautiful setting on a Nantucket beach. Whales leap from the blue ocean waters. In a beautiful tent outside a gorgeous seaside home, Kidman, aka Greer Garrison Winbury, embraces her three sons. Guests at a rehearsal dinner sip champagne while carefully articulating expository and/or ominous dialogue like “Maid of honor, at your service!” and “I love this woman to death! Get it? To dead.” Then there are establishing shots of police tape and evidence markers on the beach. Someone says, “Nobody’s getting married today. Someone died.” Someone else says, “Oh, they’re rich. Rich from child sex rings on a private island. Rich from ‘I’m bored — let’s buy a monkey.’ Rich from killing someone and getting away with it.”

In other words, this murder show is going to be a good time! We’re all going to have so much fun trying to figure out who did it! This isn’t one of those somber, important shows. This is a gas! But what if no one gets it? What if Kidman’s painfully straightforward performance and Schreiber’s grimace that implies he’s being held there under duress don’t communicate enough about how much fun this show is? Cue the opening credits dance choreography!

Set to the tune of Meghan Trainor’s “Criminals” (key lyric: “Lock me up ‘cause I’ve been bad / And I know I’ll do it again”), a drone shot shows the entire cast on the beach, lined up outside that same rehearsal dinner tent. They’re wearing their rehearsal dinner costumes. They’re shoeless. They’re performing a choreographed dance that includes moves like “arms over head,” “clap then slide,” and “turn to the side pointing to the sky.”

Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning are either genuinely enjoying it or pretending that this is a delightful joke. Most of the other participants are at least on board and doing their best to pretend that this is a great idea and that they are, in fact, completely comfortable with this group dance number setting the tone for a Nantucket murder show. Consider Irina Dubova, who plays the maid standing behind Fahy. That’s a team player. That’s someone who has taken charge, someone who may have reservations about this endeavor but who is here to do a job and do it well.

Kidman’s approach, meanwhile, is ethereal dissociation. She’s here. She’s clearly the center of this whole thing. But she’s an absent center, exuding a calm, Zen-like composure that conveys utter confidence in herself while also suggesting she’s on an inner sabbatical. Is she fully committed to the character of Greer Garrison Winbury, a wealthy romance novelist whose marriage is falling apart? Or is she perhaps on a Thanos-esque mission to amass mother roles in a series for every streaming platform — and once she does, she can ascend to a higher plane of existence?

Photo: Netflix

Then there’s Schreiber. This might look easy, and you might assume that anyone can pull off this facial expression. No, no, no! It’s difficult to look so focused while filming a group dance number on a beach for the opening credits of a show about a gruesome crime. It takes effort and concentration. This man is a professional and he’s going nail it. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

The perfect couple is not entirely new here. PachinkoApple TV+’s heartbreaking and beautiful show about multigenerational trauma in a Korean family also uses a dance sequence for its intro. In that case, the dance is a defiant and glorious expression of exuberant joy, a metafictional framework that offers a moment of relief and celebration for characters whose fictional arcs are often shaped by pain. If PachinkoThe actors of ‘look directly into the camera and are situated in a liminal space, both inside and outside the fiction. They create a bond of shared experience with the viewer, a simultaneous acknowledgement and deferment.

The perfect couple does the same thing when you think about it. It’s murder…but it’s also dance. The dance of to live And dead. It’s a TV show for the beach, and everyone can have fun. Just ask Liev Schreiber.