This is a diverting, soapy murder mystery that functions as sunset/sunrise porn but ultimately didn’t satisfy me. I think it would have been better if it was tighter and less soapy, but I’m not sure I would have been satisfied even if it had been tighter as I found the reveal a titch unsatisfactory.

SPOILERS

So, first, let’s start with the good. Though I only knew three members of the cast, I think the cast is great and I think they absolutely inhabit their roles. Even the two most famous people do a pretty good job of disappearing into these roles so I was not thinking about the actors Nicole Kidman and Liev Schrieber. Some of that comes from spending enough time with the characters but I do think the cast was great.

Also, it’s just really nice to look at. I’ve never been to Nantucket or Cape Code but it sure makes those places look idyllic. And if you like sunsets, sunrises or moonrises…well, this is the show for you. Because this show has some incredible shots of the sky.

It’s a more interestingly shot series than you would think. There are a lot of, um, eye closeups for some reason. I’m not sure they’re effective but they’re different. And the show saves its most acrobatic shot for the very, very end – right before the postscript – which I thought was a nice touch. Often directors want you to know they can do that stuff immediately.

But this show is too long. There’s a lot of plot for a show in which there is one murder. And a lot of that plot is soapy interpersonal drama that doesn’t feel germane to the mystery, at least to me. Moreover, the way the show is structured means that you can guess the murderer if you do process of elimination, as each episode eliminates one or more of the suspects. I know this because Jenn, who claims to never be able to guess the killer, guessed the killer. And though I thought it was someone else, I agreed her guess was just as good. Moreover, due to the way the show was structured the whole final episode would have had to be denouement for me to have been right, so the moment episode 5 ended, it was either that or Jenn was right and I was wrong. I think a tighter show doesn’t have that happen.

And some of the excess plot just changes how we think about Hewson’s character, who is the audience surrogate. It sometimes feels like everybody has to be awful now and Hewson has her episode of weakness where she’s not a suspect but she’s on the level of everyone else. That felt like it weakened the show.

And I also didn’t love the killer reveal, which is a giant SPOILER.

I do get why she did it: she wanted to both get her husband’s money – as Jenn said, that’s why she married him – and she wants to avenge her idol. But I don’t know if the show made her evil enough early on, she was more of a cypher to me than she was outright awful. I knew she wasn’t nice but a murderer? But the real reason I think that I didn’t find it satisfying is that she and her baby are disposable in a way that nobody else is. Anyone else – at least among the family and Hewson’s character – ruins the lives of these people. But it feels like she did it and now they can live happily ever after (which that acrobatic shot heavily implies). Maybe that’s sort of the point – that the rich will move on from the less rich and still be rich – but if it was then I don’t think it quite sold it.

But I mostly didn’t mind it and I did laugh out loud a few times, even though the show is not a comedy. There are a few moments of genuine comedy in each episode and a couple of them hit really well, including one moment in the last episode which I really, really enjoyed. And, as I said, I thought the cast was good.

6/10