Service: Netflix
Series Year: 2026
Watch: Neflix
Ms. Hipster and I are still debating if this show was meant to be a comedy, or if it just came off that way. Absurd can be funny. Jon Berthal’s character constantly fucking up and his constant exasperation over his fuck ups is funny. The absolute ridiculousness around the resolution of the mystery and the complete inability for anyone to do their jobs correctly is also kind of funny. In fact, it’s sometimes laugh-out-loud level funny. Though it seems that perhaps nobody let Tessa Thompson in on the this-is-kind-of-cheesy-so-just-go-with-it nature of this series. She is, as usual, often acting in a completely different show than the rest of the cast. They’re winking and she’s thinking Emmy. Or maybe that’s just her style — kind of under and over-acting all at the same time. It’s a choice. Or maybe it’s not and she just can’t act. That’s a mystery without a solution.
It seems, however, that Bernthal is all in on it. I’m honestly not sure that dude has another gear. He’s just at ten always. And while that might be annoying with another actor, it somehow works for him. His cranked up “southern” accent. His constant addition of “yeah” at the end of his sentences that is most definitely not in the script. His quirks are his super-powers. And while this fancy-pants Jewish kid from D.C. — who went to Skidmore and somehow has a grad degree from Harvard — pretty much always plays rough-and-tumble, intense weirdos, he somehow sells it always. There’s something in his physicality and sweaty countenance that reads edgy and a little out of control. And here he is, once again, playing Detective Jack Harper, who is about the worst detective anyone has ever seen ever. And not just because he slept with a murder victim (filling her with what we learn is a copious amount of semen) seemingly moments before she is slaughtered in the woods at night on the hood of an expensive sports sedan. Yes, this is that kind of show.
To imagine this is anything but all-out camp would be folly. The absolute dumbest stuff happens, and the characters are cartoonish in the way I imagine characters on those primetime, made-for-boomers CBS series are cartoonish. First, we have the dead-child trope. Because Bernthal’s character, Jack, and Thompson’s character, Anna Andrews, are a married couple who once had a baby. That baby is now dead. Which apparently drove the couple apart, she just kind of taking off from their life in suburban Atlanta and her job as an anchor on the nightly news to… I’m honestly not sure. And, in retrospect, I’m not sure we’re ever privy to what the hell she’d been doing for the months between taking off and resurfacing at her workplace in Atlanta, only to be told they gave her slot away to the new blonde news lady, Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse). Meanwhile, Jack is back in Dahlonega, where both he and Anna grew up because his career in Atlanta flamed out and he was fired because he spent his days searching for his missing wife. Yet, nobody in town seems to know that he is married to the lady on the news, who also grew up in Dahlonega. Which leads to the fact that this show is really short on details and logic. This woman — who has to be the most famous person ever to come out of this small town — is married to a police detective in said small town from which they both hail and it’s a surprise somehow? What the actual hell is happening? There are a lot of flashbacks, one of which is a scene where we see Jack and a very pregnant Anna buy a house either in the Atlanta suburbs or in Dahlonega, which is apparently a ways away from Atlanta and not a spot from which someone working in Atlanta would commute. This lack of clarity here causes some serious timeline and plot holes in the finale when, in another flashback, we learn the fate of that baby, who was left with her mother, Alice (Crystal Fox), on a date night presumably at their house, or maybe at her house, either in Dahlonega or Atlanta. Whew. A truly serious continuity break without the context of where the couple is when. I can make assumptions, but just a simple clarification of time and place would have made things make sense. But, again, this series, which is ostensibly a mystery built with clues and whatnot, is very loose with details and reality.
So, the aforementioned murder. Jack is put in charge of it. Because of course he is. But, wait! He was just filling her with the aforementioned gallon of stuff right before she died! Yes, he is compromised. And he’s a terrible detective. No wonder he lost his job in Atlanta. Which leads to the fact that he just drives around in a regular pickup truck the entire series. No cop car. No light or sirens, nothing. He also never seems to pull a badge or anything. He just seems like an amped-up dude constantly jumping out of his truck, approaching people and being super shady. I’m honestly not sure, after watching the whole series, if he was, in fact, a cop. But, amazingly, Anna convinces her news editor boss — now that she’s lost her anchor role — to go down to Dahlonega to be an on-air reporter about this interesting small-town murder. Never mind the fact — once again — that a man she’s currently married to is in charge of the investigation. Which, again, nobody seems to know. Which makes no fucking sense. At all. So, Jack is trying to cover up the fact he slept with the victim — who happens to be a high school friend of both his sister, Zoe (Marin Ireland), and his current wife, Anna — and Anna is working to uncover the murderer and revive her career. A murder victim who, again, was a best friend of hers in high school. Which, again, somehow nobody seems to know or remember. It’s absurd. Jack basically runs around, sending his deputy, Priya “Boston” Patel (Sunita Mani), on wild goose chases to deflect suspicion off of him until he can figure out who actually killed this woman, Rachel (Jamie Tisdale). I’m going to assume that they call Priya by that stupid city-based nickname because they didn’t want to ask Patel to do a Southern accent and needed her to be from somewhere else. But, Boston? She certainly doesn’t have a Boston accent. In fact, they make her do a bunch of voice acting on the other side of phone calls, and her performance is… AI inspired. It literally sounds like they sampled her voice and cobbled together something fed through an algorithm without turning on the “human” filter. It’s not good.
Anyhow, it turns out that Rachel isn’t the only victim in this murder spree. No, all the girls from that high school clique are in danger. And, man, this show goes to great lengths to make you believe that this person or that person is the killer. Including one fake out that is so incredibly ridiculous that even though I called it, I couldn’t believe they tried to Ugly Duckling us with two actresses who couldn’t possibly be the same person. Like not even close. None of the people in this movie are particularly likable or worth caring about, so it’s not exactly sad when more of them end up dead. Though, at the same time, we don’t really feel much when at least of them ends up happy. The whole twist reveal at the end of the movie feels about as earned as The Village, and about half as effective. Especially after spending six hours getting to it. Thing is, they throw everyone out there as suspects. And presumably the title of the series, His & Hers, is supposed to represent the perspectives of Jack and Anna and how they see things in their relationship and this mystery. But, as it turns out, neither one of their perspectives is correct or relevant. Because there is a hidden force at work here. And the funny thing is, the series ends, everyone (save the dead people, I guess) are seemingly happy. And Jack — being the shitty detective he is — still has no clue who the murderer actually was. Yet he somehow gets hired back in Atlanta after allowing a murderer to kill several people under his watch, destroying evidence, lying to his partner and everyone else involved and ultimately completely botching the case. Man, it must be nice to live in this world where there is no culpability for anything and everything just kind of works out.
Despite all this, I had a weirdly fun time watching this bonkers series. Mostly for Bernthal, honestly. It has no business existing in this Netflix universe where every pulpy airport read is turned into television, but we all need a little mindless media to get us through the slow times. Though it does sound like the novel — originally set in England — made a lot more sense perspective-wise in writing than it did on screen. That whole his versus her perspective definitely got lost in the nonsense as the show’s creators didn’t stick to that script and what I imagine was more of a Rashomon approach in the book. I guess for that we’ll always have goofy shows like The Afterparty and episodes of Three’s Company to keep us happy.
