I was intrigued about this new Netflix series that was released while I was on holiday last week. As it was a murder mystery drama, a genre that I like, I was interested to give it a try. And so how was it then? Let's find out more, shall we?

Brief Story Line

The Winbury family was well known in Nantucket as a traditionally wealthy family, with Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber - Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, The Manchurian Candidate etc) and his wife Greer (Nicole Kidman - A Family Affair, Aquaman etc) dubbed as the perfect couple due to their great marriage life for 29 years. When their middle son Benji (Billy Howle - Infinite Storm, Under The Banner of Heaven mini series etc) was getting married with Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson - Robin Hood 2018 version, Tesla etc), it was set to be a huge celebration with some people invited to join the wedding ceremony. They included the maid of honor Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy - The Bold Type TV series etc), best man Shooter Dival (Ishaan Khatter - Dhadak etc), Benji's older brother Thomas (Jack Reynor - The Peripheral TV series etc), his pregnant wife Abby (Dakota Fanning - The Watchers, Charlotte's Web etc), the youngest Winbury son Will (Sam Nivola - White Noise etc) and several other guests.

Unfortunately during the wedding eve, a dead body was found on the beach near their house. The State police detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend TV series etc) was assigned to help the investigation together with the local police chief Dan Carter (Michael Beach - Saw X etc).

So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

I have been a fan of stories that involve this kind of murder mystery with several suspects which took time to investigate and usually had few surprising twists. And this one was quite OK as the mystery did keep me guessing till almost the end, although I was disappointed that I forgotten about a clue that was shown not so subtly and should have made me confident who was the culprit. Anyway, I think the series could be classified as semi whodunit with many layers of deception and facts finding, but rather than having private investigator like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes or the more recent one Benoit Blanc (from Knives Out), this time the investigation was done by the police.

For me personally, the main attraction of whodunit was actually the person who did the investigation as their characters usually were very interesting and colorful. I have no problem with the detective and police chief here as they were more down to earth (and probably more realistic). However it did take the fun out of the mystery solving as there was no revelation done by the investigator but rather just a standard exposing the person responsible. The part that interest me here was actually the characters involved especially Winbury family and friends, although sometimes I felt the story was a bit like a soap opera (Netflix did say it's soapy).

I think the cast did their job adequately with few quite convincing in their roles particularly Nicole Kidman and Dakota Fanning, plus my favorite character Thomas (portrayed so perfectly by Jack Reynor). Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were plenty of recurring cast like Isabelle Adjani (Camille Claudel, Diabolique etc) as Wilbury's family friend Isabel Nallet, Adina Porter (Paper Girls TV series etc) as Greer's editor Enid, Mia Isaac (Gray Matter etc) as Chief Dan's daughter Chloe, Irina Dubova as the housekeeper Gosia, Thomas Flanagan (Sons of Anarchy TV series etc) as Broderick and few others. With such large cast and mostly known to audience, plus the lovely scenery of Nantucket with interesting view of the very wealthy American family, no wonder the series was quite popular and became the most watched in US in its first week and Top 10 in other countries.

The mini series only consisted of 6 episodes which made it easy to finish. The story telling was quite OK and there were indeed few surprises, most notably for me was related to the mysterious person in episode 5. In the opening credits, it was mentioned that the series was based on the novel of the same title, written by Elin Hilderbrand which was also her first murder mystery genre. I also noticed that Nicole Kidman was one of the Executive producers. Looks like she is enjoying this role as she had done in her other series like Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and several others. From what I read, the series received mixed reviews from critics, though audience were far more receptive. 

Overall it was quite fun watching this series as it had elements of mystery, interesting characters and the excitement of finding out the person responsible for murder. However, there was no revelation during the climax which made the ending not exactly entertaining for me. It had few dark humor resulted from the extreme remarks/behavior by the very wealthy people (including Gosia who just worked as housekeeper but had the same attitude). So if you are interested in watching the many well known cast portraying these kind of people combined with a murder mystery to solve, then I think you would have fun with this. But if you expect an awesome whodunit series, likely you would not be too satisfied. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars