His & Hers: When Auteur Vision Meets Flawed Source Material—A Cautionary Tale
Darlings, we need to discuss Netflix’s “His & Hers,” and not for the reasons the streaming giant hoped. This marks the first major disappointment of the new year—a particularly bitter pill when one considers the pedigree involved. Director William Oldroyd, the visionary behind the deliciously dark “Lady Macbeth” and the feminist prison noir “Eileen,” ventures into television for the first time, only to find himself utterly thwarted by Alice Feeney’s source material. The result? A series that fumbles its central mystery’s structuring device and stumbles toward an inept finale featuring two endings: one painfully obvious and stupid, the other merely stupid.
What makes this failure particularly frustrating is the talent squandered. Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal—two of Hollywood’s most compelling actors, known for their interesting choices and undeniable screen presence—are left floundering in a sea of unconvincing misdirections. The chemistry between them? Nonexistent. They’re tasked with bringing depth to five episodes of predictable plot mechanics before everything collapses in the finale faceplant. This material screamed for a tight 90-minute feature, if that.
The premise initially promises intrigue: a murder rocks tiny Dahlonega, an indistinct town an hour from Atlanta. The victim was stabbed multiple times and staged with a taunting message—notable because Dahlonega has never dealt with murder before. Enter Jack Harper (Bernthal), a detective and native son who previously worked in Atlanta, now barking obvious orders at his partner Priya (Sunita Mani, criminally underutilized).
The case attracts Anna (Thompson), a former Atlanta news anchor who vanished following her child’s death. After a year’s absence—during which she was replaced by Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse, bad but not her fault)—Anna sees the Dahlonega murder as her opportunity to reclaim her position. She commandeers Richard (Pablo Schreiber, also bad but also not his fault), a cameraman who just happens to be Lexy’s husband.
And therein lies the fundamental problem: this series drowns in “just happens to be” contrivances. The victim just happens to be Anna’s high-school frenemy. Jack just happens to have his own relationship with the victim. Jack and Anna just happen to be married—though it’s more technicality than reality, since she ghosted him for a year.
Despite plot descriptions suggesting both Anna and Jack are suspects, there isn’t a single moment that convincingly positions either as the killer. Instead, viewers are subjected to watching how spectacularly bad Jack is as a detective and how equally terrible Anna is as a reporter. Their shared ineptitude becomes the only believable aspect of their relationship—they deserve each other, and both deserve better from this series.
Until the actively irritating finale, “His & Hers” remains more generic than overtly bad, resembling various forgettable Netflix limited series filmed in Southern tax havens. It’s a less interesting version of 2022’s Michelle Monaghan doppelgänger dud “Echoes”—hardly the comparison any prestige project desires.
