Stream It Or Skip It?

The new Netflix thriller His & Hers has the look and feel of a twisty prestige-TV-era noir mystery. But it’s also slow-moving to a fault and frustrating as hell. But it’s still worth watching because of its leads and its potential. Read on for more…

HIS & HERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In a rainy patch of forest, the camera pushes in on a red sports car, a brutally attacked woman lying on the roof. She’s still twitching but life is quickly ebbing out of her as she bleeds out.

The Gist: In Atlanta, Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) breathlessly enters her apartment, wearing a hoodie and checking on an infected tooth. Signs of her depression are all over her apartment: empty wine bottles, piles of unopened mail, and other messes. She clears all of that off and tosses it; the next day, at the dentist, she sees that a body was found in her hometown of Dahlonega.

Anna goes to the TV station where she used to be a news anchor before going on leave a year prior, after the loss of her child. She is annoyed that the perky Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse) has her job, but proposes to the news director that she go to Dahlonega to report on the murder. She insists on using Richard Jones (Pablo Schreiber), Lexy’s husband, as her cameraman.

In Dahlongega, Sherrif’s Department detectives Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) and Priya Patel (Sunita Mani) arrive at the crime scene, which has been compromised by the rain and deputies tromping around. He wants to find the woman’s cell phone, and as reporters gather at the scene, he tries to fend them off, but is rattled when he sees Anna, who asks him if he knew the dead woman.

When Anna goes to visit her mother Alice (Crystal Fox), and Jack comes in to take care of things, we find out that Anna and Jack are married, but separated. He used to be a cop in Atlanta, but had to find a job in her hometown after being booted off the APD. There definitely seems to be a histroy of mistrust between them, something that’s borne out by a scene the night of the murder.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Developed by William Oldroyd based on Alice Feeney’s novel, His & Hers has the laconic, slow-burn feel of the first season of True Detective or the only season of Sharp Objects. It also has the cat-and-mouse feel of a show like The Beast In Me.

Our Take: From the first seconds of His & Hers, we knew that both Anna and Jack have something to hide. Heck, just about all of the characters on the show have something to hide. But in our desire to get some insights into their secrets, we just got frustrated watching the two of them bicker and withhold information, not just from each other but the people working for and with them.

Oldroyd, who directed the first episode, along with showrunner Dee Johnson and her writing staff, certainly take a lot of effort to communicate the easygoing, mysterious, somewhat onminous vibe around Dahlonega, and show a little bit of the struggle Anna had being a part of one the town’s very few Black families. It seems that she made friends — including the woman who ended up dead on the hood of that car — but her move to Atlanta cut off those ties.

Or did it? One thing we don’t know for sure are the circumstances of how Anna lost her child. We’re assuming that the child was also Jack’s, but we’re not 100 percent sure. And we’re not at all sure about what their relationship was like before that tragic event. Perhaps we’ll see some of that in subsequent episodes. But it’s one of those details about the story that feels frustratingly just out of reach, something that would make us enjoy the story more instead of just sitting there, wondering about if there is more to a scene than what we’re seeing.

There really is a fine line between keeping viewers on their toes and withholding too much information, and His & Hers seems to start out on the bad side of that line. But with the performances of Thompson and Bernthal, especially when they’re on screen together and show the dynamic that brought them together and eventually broke them apart, plus the idea that each of them suspects the other, there is certainly enough to the story to keep us curious.

Performance Worth Watching: As much as we like Bernthal, when he puts on his “Southern” accent, it just reminds us of his Walking Dead character Shane Walsh. No, here Thompson is the draw, because she plays Anna with a compelling combination of pain and confidence, and a vindictive streak a mile wide.

Sex And Skin: That vindictive streak in Anna comes out when she requests that Lexy’s husband RIchard as a cameraman, as we see in a scene at the inn where they’re staying. There is also a morgue scene featuring the naked murder victim.

Parting Shot: In a scene from the night of the murder, in that rainy forest, we see both Anna and Jack, but we won’t mention exactly what each are doing.

Sleeper Star: Pablo Schreiber is his usual goofy self as Richard, whom is quickly convinced by Anna that he’s feeling inadequate in the shadow of his news anchor wife.

Most Pilot-y Line: Jack keeps calling Priya “Boston,” which we guess is where she used to work. That’s obviously a shortcut to communicate his slight distrust of “northern” cops, but it’s also annoying.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Like we said, the performances and potential for lots of twists makes His & Hers a show that we want to see more of. But the first episode needed to give viewers a few more crums of contextual information in order for it to make more story sense.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.