Based on Alice Feney’s novel of the same name, His & Hers (His and Hers) drops audiences into a summer in Atlanta, a murder, and a broken family refusing to heal. The series’s showrunner, William Oldroyd, puts a solid focus on the protagonists and the lies and murder that begin to weave around them.
Lucky for him, his central figures are played by Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, two actors who command the screen and feel right at home in small-town Georgia.
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Set in the sweltering heat of Georgia, Anna (Tessa Thompson) lives in haunting reclusivity, fading away from her friends and career as a news anchor. Having returned to town after a year away, her life is in shambles. She’s isolated, cheating on her husband, and trying to cure the grief left by her daughter’s death with anything she can.
Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal carry His and Hers farther than its script.
But when Anna overhears about a murder in Dahlonega, Anna is snapped back to life, pouncing on the case and searching for answers, and she just so happens to be back home. However, Anna’s husband, Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), is on the other side of the case and is strangely suspicious of her involvement in the case about why she chose to return now, of all times.
His and Hers’ title uses our assumptions around Anna and Jack to paint two sides to the story that’s unfolding, his and hers. Who you believe shifts as we learn more about their fractured marriage and the circumstances of the murder. Or in some cases, the likelihood that one of them is the murderer intensifies.
While we are dropped into Anna and Jack’s lives as adults, we also see flashbacks to Anna’s teenage years (Kristen Maxwell). She’s in the popular girl group at school with Andrea (Savanna Gann), Rachel (Isabelle Kusman), Helen (Tiffany Ho), and Zoe (Leah Merritt). She makes records herself, recounting her life, prepping for a future in news, knowing that she always wanted to be an anchor in front of the camera.
The past is just as important as any current murder in His and Hers.
But because of how mean the group is, there is always an unsettling feeling about her friendships and how easily they can treat her the same way they treat Catherine Kelly (Astrid Rotenberry), Andrea’s sister. The tense nature of the relationship and how strained it becomes the meaner the girls grow is hard to witness. As we see more of Anna’s life through the past, we also understand why, as an adult, the death of her daughter made her run.
Unfortunately, running is all Anna can do when the people she held close left her to be assaulted in the woods on her 16th birthday. That’s the secret at the core of His and Hers, and once it’s revealed, we can see how that one moment’s ripples have shaped everything after. Right down to Catherine Kelly rebranding herself as Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and always looking to one-up Anna (even if Anna is sleeping with her husband Richard, played by Pablo Schreiber).
The crux of His and Hers is that neither Anna nor Jack is okay, at all. And because of that, they are messy. Not always guilty of the crime or secret festering around them, but they are always messy. But more importantly, their mess is what obscures the audience’s view of Alice, Anna’s mom, who has been struggling with dementia and sundowning.
Motherhood finds itself at the center of this Netflix Original, even if it isn’t entirely investigated.
When Jack is with Ms. Alice, he takes care of her. He brings her back home and treats her with dignity and care. When Anna is with her mom, the pain on her face is palpable. Pain from knowing her daughter died on her mother’s watch, but also the pain of watching her mother lose who she is. But even in those moments, it all comes back to mess.
The mess is what keeps this Netflix Original limited series interesting, even when some of the twisting elements go sideways or meander. For fans of melodramatic murder mysteries, His and Hers hits this specific genre on the head. However, the eccentricities and mess often tend to overshadow the trauma and family drama on display.
The absurdity of some moments undercut the very real trauma that Anna survived. One moment when she was 16 years old sent ripples through their small town and her. However, despite how well Tessa Thompson conveys the way Anna’s pain bubbles under the surface, the melodrama pulls the audience (and her) out of it.
While the storytelling itself and the hammering in of twists do affect the pacing for His and Hers, the lead performances keep the limited series’ head above water. Jon Bernthal can do intimidating well, as we all know, but in this series, it’s all about anxiety.
His and Hers is just Messy, but it works when the melodrama doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Jack isn’t a bad guy, but he has made mistakes. But with Rachel murdered and him the last person to see her (and sleep with her), Jack has two choices. Come clean on the case he is investigating, or use his power as a detective to protect himself. True to the thriller course, he chooses the latter.
For the bulk of His and Hers, Jack is anxious, worried, and always a little angry. If Anna is always looking for a way to dissociate, especially if it’s with a man in her hotel room, then Jack is trying to just have control of the situation at hand.
While both of them contributed to their marriage dissolving, due in large part to their unaddressed grief, neither of them can see past the other to take responsibility. Their misunderstandings, resentment, and inability to talk with each other are paramount to the His and Hers mystery. In their dysfunction, they miss the clues around them that would point to the real killer.
Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal don’t necessarily have perfect chemistry, but they do have antagonism. Still, both actors play in the sad liminal stage of a marriage ending extremely well, which more than compensates. The emotional depth that the two bring to their roles is fantastic, even when the script falters.
His and Hers is a decent whodunnit and a better melodrama. The twists in the series often struggle to find grounded approaches to the big moments unraveling, but the sincerity with which our leads play their parts keeps it entertaining. More importantly, Netflix’s influx of murder mystery series keeps on giving, even if they don’t always hit the perfect note. It may be one twist too many, but it finds solid footing regardless.
His and Hers is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.
