[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Trauma can make you or break you. And sometimes it does both. More than once. That’s the heart of Netflix’s His & Hers, the six-episode, Georgia-set and filmed drama that follows an estranged married couple investigating a murder. Tessa Thompson (who also produces) and Jon Bernthal lead as Anna Andrews and Jack Harper, once idyllically happy and very much in love and now existing, in the loosest sense of that term, emotional worlds away from each other. She’s an Atlanta TV journalist, emerging from a self-imposed hiatus following a devastating loss. He’s a detective back in their small hometown of Dahloniga.
Dahloniga is the source of ghosts for the pair, both known and unknown and still echoing around them. When a woman who is tangentially and historically connected to the couple is murdered following a tryst with someone other than her husband, things get muddy very, very fast.
The murder brings Anna back to reporting, much to the chagrin of Lexi (Rebecca Rittenhouse), the anchor who ascended in her absence–and Dahloniga–with a vengeance. And right out of the gate, she’s making impulsive choices that tip us toward not being entirely sure we can trust her. We get immediate whispers of why she left, but the why of her return is more complicated.
Jack is equally a cipher. He’s raising his niece with his alcoholic sister Zoe (Marin Ireland), keeping a watchful eye on his not-quite-ex mother-in-law, Emily (Crystal Fox), who’s showing signs of cognitive decline, and breaking in his Boston transplant partner, Priya (Sunita Mani). When the murder rocks their sleepy little town, and becomes the first of many that share a common thread, his quiet but manageable chaos, which now includes Anna, starts to go off the rails.
As the story progresses, we find out each of the women killed were awful people, capable of doing terrible things to those who trusted them, but who seemed to just keep moving onward and upward for decades without facing repercussions for their abhorrence. Until they did. It’s a taut tale of twists and turns and secrets, betrayals, reversals, and reveals. Thompson and Bernal anchor all of it, expertly playing a couple whose story is not yet over, if they can just get through the havoc swirling around them that threatens to consume or kill them, or both.
The series is based on the book of the same name by Alice Feeney and is the first episodic drama written and directed by William Oldroyd, who’s previously done shorts and features. It’s a heady deep dive into the damage secrets can inflict, especially when they’re hidden for years; the long-lingering effects of grief, and the “two sides to every story” duplicitous nature of unpacking what you think happened vs. what did happen.
Note the MA content warnings if certain events are triggering for you. All six episodes are streaming now on Netflix. If you watch it, don’t look for spoilers. Watch it play out cold to really appreciate the reveal and the performances that accompany it. Here’s a sneak peek.
Photos and videos courtesy of Netflix.
