Netflix’s Murder Mystery Is A Major Letdown

I was really hoping that a new murder mystery starring Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson would be a Netflix winner, but after a solid enough start, His & Hers goes downhill fast. There’s a murder mystery here, with some twists and turns along the way, and also a story about an estranged married couple dealing with the grief of losing a child. But the actual detective work is almost nonexistent and I never connected with any of the characters enough to really care about their personal struggles. It’s also weirdly reminiscent of a much better show: HBO’s excellent Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams.

Both shows follow a news reporter sent to a small town – Dahlonega, Georgia in His & Hers and the fictional Wind Gap in Sharp Objects – where a brutal murder has taken place. These reporters are both from the town in question. Their families are still around. The towns haven’t changed much, and skeletons reside in every closet.

Both are also adaptations of novels. Sharp Objects was adapted from Gillian Flynn’s 2006 debut novel of the same name. His & Hers is adapted from Alice Feeney’s 2020 novel of the same name, though Feeney’s story takes place in the UK. Whether or not His & Hers is derivative, it feels that way watching.

There are some big differences, of course. Sharp Objects is a Southern gothic murder mystery that’s absolutely gripping from start to finish, with incredible writing and performances across the board. His & Hers is a generic mystery that tries hard to shock its audience, but is ultimately both predictable and, with its big twist at the end, laughably implausible.

The other big difference is the husband. Thompson plays journalist Anna Harper, who left her husband and hometown and disappeared for a year after the death of her child. Bernthal plays her husband, Jack Harper, a detective with the Sheriff’s department. Both have ties to the victim and as the story unfolds, their involvement becomes increasingly suspicious. This is as much a story about the rocky marriage of Anna and Jack as it is a murder mystery.

This draws focus away from a single protagonist who we can relate to, and it’s done so that the audience will question the reliability of our leads. This has the unfortunate consequence of making both Anna and Jack paper-thin caricatures of the ambitious reporter and small town cop.

The limited series scratches the surface of Anna’s past and a deeply troubling event that she experienced in high school. This event, we discover, is central to the murders now taking place in Dahlonega. This might have worked better if Anna were the main character, rather than Jack. It’s also eerily similar to Sharp Objects, which is all about Camille (Adams) reckoning with her past and her hypochondriac mother and how everything is tied together in order to make sense of what’s going on in the present.

While I enjoyed the first couple episodes of His & Hers, it went downhill quickly. Bernthal’s Jack becomes increasingly impulsive and unhinged. Only his partner does any real detective work. It was billed as some kind of rivalry between Anna and Jack, with each suspecting that the other was behind the murders, but this was never really the case. They clash endlessly over their past and estrangement, but neither seems to think the other was truly responsible for any murders.

In many ways, His & Hers felt like it had no idea what kind of murder mystery it actually wanted to be. Jack barely pays attention to the investigation, ignoring key details that would have helped him put two and two together. He makes wild accusations against the husband of the first victim that make his character seem weak and pathetic. Anna’s motivations are bizarre and confusing. I wouldn’t mind so much if Jack’s mental state actually made sense, or Anna’s characterization was less fuzzy. The show needed to either lean harder into the idea that one of these people was the killer, or just toss that angle out entirely and focus on delivering a good mystery.

One of the first big twists toward the end turns out to be a red herring, but the twist itself is so absurd and nonsensical, so utterly unlikely and coincidental, that the only reason you might not think about it too much is the even more ludicrous twist that comes right after. I won’t spoil any of it here, but I was rolling my eyes throughout the entire last episode (or two) and by the end, by the final reveal, I wanted the last six hours of my life back.

Bad dialogue, phoned in performances and a bafflingly amateurish script make this an easy skip on Netflix. You’d be much better off watching Sharp Objects or, if you don’t have HBO, check out Lupin, Dept Q or Giri/Haji on Netflix.

Did you watch His & Hers? Did you enjoy it? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also recently reviewed the cat-and-mouse UK crime thriller, The Game, which I found only slightly less ridiculous than His & Hers.