WHIPLASH

Netflix’s New Murder Mystery Has a Jaw-Dropping Twist

You’re going to want to stick with “His & Hers” until the end.

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Hell hath no fury like a woman grieving—a truth demonstrated by His & Hers, the story of a murder that embroils an estranged couple in an investigation involving old hometown acquaintances.

For his first small-screen endeavor, Lady Macbeth and Eileen writer/director William Oldroyd dives into pulpy waters with this six-part Netflix miniseries (January 8), which repeatedly, and amusingly, toys with expectations.

With Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal leading the way as at-odds spouses working the same case from different angles, it’s a thriller (based on Alice Feeney’s 2020 novel) that telegraphs multiple solutions to its mystery, only to repeatedly pull the rug out from under its characters (and audience) on the way to a whiplash-inducing, laughter-eliciting finale.

In the quiet town of Dahlonega, Georgia, detective Jack Harper (Bernthal) is called to the scene of a gruesome crime. On a dirt road in the middle of the woods, a woman’s body has been found on the hood of her car. Stabbed 40 times and left with a message scrawled on her fingernails (“Two-Faced”), this victim is identified as Rachel Hopkins (Jamie Tisdale), the wife of local pizza magnet Clyde Duffie (Chris Bauer).

Under immediate pressure to solve this slaying in an enclave that’s not used to such horrors, Jack and his newbie partner Priya (Sunita Mani) discover boot prints surrounding tracks made by (Rachel’s?) bare feet, and little else. Before they can get a handle on the situation, Jack is asked by reporter Anna (Thompson), in front of her press mates, if he knew Rachel—a query that’s almost as surprising as the fact that it came from Anna, who’s his wife.

Anna has returned to Dahlonega following her reappearance at the Atlanta TV station where she handled news-anchor duties until abruptly dropping off the face of the Earth a year prior. Anna wants to take back her old gig, which is now handled by Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse), but that’s an initial no-go. The best she can get out of her boss Jim (Mike Pniewski) is permission to cover the Dahlonega story as a beat reporter. Anna’s request that she be partnered with cameraman Richard (Pablo Schreiber), Lexy’s husband, further underscores her Machiavellian spirit.

Thompson flashes her devilishly cunning smile so frequently that it’s easy to root for her in this redemptive comeback quest—and, also, to delight in her attempts to rile up Jack, who’s none too pleased to see his wife, who abandoned him and her dementia addled mother Alice (Crystal Fox) in the wake of their seven month-old daughter’s tragic death.

[Warning: Minor spoiler ahead.]

His & Hers boasts multiple surprises, the first of which is that Jack is connected to Rachel via his sister Zoe (Marin Ireland)—a drunk whom he lives with and financially supports, along with his charming niece Meg (Ellie Rose Sawyer)—as well as Helen (Poppy Liu), who’s now headmistress of their high school. The fourth member of their clique was Anna, and that instantly makes her a suspect (in our eyes, if not Jack’s). Then again, she’s not the sole guilty-looking individual in Oldroyd’s series, given that Jack’s behavior on the night in question makes him look more than a bit dodgy.

Jack, naturally, wants to keep his ties to this homicide under wraps, and that proves tricky in His & Hers, considering the evidence found at the scene. To divert attention elsewhere, he and Priya question Clyde, who confesses that, due to his medical issues, he and his wife had a unique arrangement. The discovery of the deceased’s missing cell phone reveals that something shady was going on between Clyde, Rachel, and Helen, whose every word is dripping with deviousness. All the while, the detective clashes with Anna, who begins her own unlikely tryst, and who’s stunned to hear about her deteriorating mother’s habit of wandering around town naked in the dead of night.

Oldroyd and fellow director Anja Marquardt stage their tale with considerable polish and minimal hysterics, positioning the series as a somber portrait of the inescapable pull of—and danger posed by—the past. Even so, there’s not much depth to His & Hers. Episodes begin with clunky narration from Anna that, hilariously, takes on new meaning at the end. And its sleuthing suspense is hampered by the material’s predictable tactic of casting each character in a suspicious light. That escalates once a second person is killed in the same manner as Rachel, complete with a friendship bracelet stuffed in her mouth, although there’s rarely doubt about Jack and Anna, whose apparent guilt is a transparent red herring.

His & Hers telegraphs half of its whodunit answer in its third installment and the other half in its fourth, thereby killing a good deal of momentum. Bernthal’s testosterone-y ruggedness, colored with underlying sadness, is a nice match for Thompson’s cutthroat wiliness, and their scenes together are the show’s dramatic backbone.

Still, there’s a sluggishness to the proceedings’ middle passages, and Schreiber is shortchanged as the morally flexible Richard, whose role in this affair is too secondary to let the actor do much with his moderate screen time. The same goes for Ireland, here reduced to playing a braying, trashy boozehound whose disposition never quite gels with the eventual revelations about her teenage behavior.

For most of its six episodes, His & Hers lets viewers think they’re one step ahead of the action. It’s a welcome relief, then, that in its final 20 minutes, the series drops a whopper of a bombshell that reconfigures everything that preceded it and, in the process, turns the project campy.

It’s too bad that this tonal shift happens so late. A bit more over-the-top energy would have served this mystery well. Nonetheless, if it’s out of left field, this stunner concludes things on a high note, which suggests, with a sly twinkle in its eye, that you can never outrun yesterday—especially when a devastated parent is concerned.

Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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