I was sitting at the Polo Lounge recently with a very senior executive at a major streamer. I will not name him, but let us just say he greenlights every project where a woman in a coastal town wears a neutral-toned cashmere sweater and hides a secret. Over a $400 bottle of Chablis, he confessed to me that Hollywood is completely misunderstood by the heartland. They think we are out of touch, he whispered, gesturing to a waiter to remove a slightly bruised olive from his line of sight, but these shows are raw, unfiltered dispatches from the trenches of immense, suffocating wealth.
The industry is currently drunk on what the trades are calling the white wine thriller. Your Big Little Lies, your All Her Fault, your The Perfect Couple. The discourse surrounding them has been relentlessly unfair, treating them as guilty pleasures for the chardonnay-addled masses. But to call these series soaps is to fundamentally misunderstand the crushing burden of having a sprawling oceanfront property and a spouse who is almost certainly a murderer.
Let us be honest with ourselves: working-class cinema has run its course. We know exactly how poverty ends. It is visually dreary, the lighting is always terrible, and the countertops are invariably formica. Where is the dramatic tension in a character who cannot pay their rent? The stakes are infinitely higher when a protagonist stands to lose her standing on the Monterey school district charity gala committee. When a woman in a $4,000 Max Mara coat discovers a corpse in her infinity pool, we are forced to confront the fragility of the American Dream.
It takes profound courage to cast Nicole Kidman in a wig and ask her to sip Pinot Noir while lying to a detective.
The physical toll this genre takes on its performers is staggering, yet completely ignored by the Academy. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to accurately portray the specific kind of grief that comes with covering up a vehicular manslaughter while maintaining a strict keto diet? The choreography required to storm out of a glass-walled living room, clutch a stemless Riedel glass, and hurl an accusation at a passive-aggressive mother-in-law without spilling a single drop of Sauvignon Blanc on a white boucle sofa is nothing short of Jackie Chan-level stunt work.
I recently moderated a panel on the evolving role of the pashmina in suspense, where the consensus was clear: the knitwear is doing the heavy lifting. Critics love to complain that the genre is monolithic, which simply proves they are not paying attention. The white wine thriller has evolved immensely. In 2017, the women drank mostly Monterey County Chardonnays. By the time The Perfect Couple premiered this year, we were seeing characters boldly transition to crisp Nantucket Sancerres. To claim this is not progress is to deny the very concept of character arc.
Furthermore, the true antagonists of these documentaries are never the murderers. It is the deeply uncouth, poorly dressed local detectives who insist on asking questions during the golden hour. I was speaking with a prominent showrunner at a premiere afterparty, and he confessed his greatest fear is a world where law enforcement refuses to wait until after the charity auction to make an arrest. The sheer disrespect for the caterers alone is chilling.
We are not just selling murder mysteries, we are providing crucial representation for women who have to fire their interior decorators because the new rug does not match the blood splatter.
The real losers in the critical backlash against these shows are the luxury real estate brokers who provide the locations. I sat next to a prominent Malibu realtor last week, and he was nearly in tears describing how hard it is to get a $30 million beachfront estate properly showcased when viewers are too distracted by the grisly murder of an au pair. They spend months finding the perfect Carrara marble for that kitchen island, he told me, and the director insists on covering it in police tape. It is a tragedy of misallocated focus.
The next time you sit down to watch a prestige thriller, I implore you to look past the superficial elements of infidelity and bludgeoning. Look at the thread count on the duvet where the body was found. Look at the impeccable landscaping that the police are currently digging up. Recognize the bravery of a protagonist who can look a federal investigator in the eye and say she saw nothing, simply because acknowledging the crime would mean missing her Pilates class. I, for one, will be pouring myself a generous glass of dry white, gazing out over my own modestly sized pool, and praying that one day, my life might be important enough for someone to die in it.