It’s not that there’s anything bad about The Undoing, the HBO miniseries based on the Jean Hanff Korelitz novel, You Should Have Known. On the contrary, the creative team is all extremely talented and delivering at the peak of their skill sets.

Director Susanne Bier, who came to international acclaim with 2004’s Brothers and directed the hit Netflix movie Bird Box, does a brilliant job finding a new perspective on the often filmed upper crust society of New York City. And writer David E. Kelley takes a story that could be a glorified episode of Murder, She Wrote and imbues it with a compulsively watchable rhythm reminiscent of his early work on The Practice.

It should come as no shock that Kelley would find another project that takes place largely in a courtroom; aside from The Practice and Ally McBeal, Kelley even found a way to make a second season of HBO’s hit miniseries Big Little Lies and set it in court. But he still finds a way, even 25 years after Ally McBeal, to bring suspense and surprise to the setting, aided by Bier’s subtle but thrilling visual style.

And there can’t be enough said about Hugh Grant’s brilliant turn as the accused husband here. Known for much of his career as a handsome but light leading man, his late-era renaissance has provided phenomenal shades to play off his expected persona, from the scene-stealing villainy of Paddington 2 to the layered nuance of A Very British Scandal. His performance through this six-episode run is spectacular, as is the work of Lily Rabe, Edgar Ramirez, and especially Noma Dumezweni as the defense attorney who has seen it all.

So what, then? If the performances, direction, and script are all top notch, and the story is a scintillating mystery that compels you back so effectively, what could the problem be?

Maybe it’s nitpicking, or maybe it’s genre exhaustion. But there’s something disingenuous about this series, which falls into a popular subgenre of the last few years I refer to as Struggles of the Idle Rich.

The series on its surface seems to be a reasonable critique of white privilege, male fragility, and the wealth gap. But for all its surface critique, the series offers up little to the conversation. It revels in its locale and its costuming, but ultimately says little about the kind of system that creates the people and circumstances we’re watching.

Bier and Kelley, as well as star Kidman, have all worked on other brilliant projects that have explored these themes in fascinating ways. That this miniseries excels effortlessly in so many other aspects only makes it feel more unfortunate that it never tries to go there as well.

Ultimately, this is an extremely effective story made by a talented team, but it leaves the impression of a critique without one’s actual presence. A hollow venture, but a beautiful one that is always entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9lhC1tNIXg

Nicole Kidman stars in this limited series as a loving wife, devoted mother and successful therapist whose life unravels when she makes discoveries about her husband’s past. The limited series follows Grace and Jonathan Fraser (Kidman and Hugh Grant) who are living the only lives they ever wanted for themselves. Overnight a chasm opens in their lives: a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child (Noah Jupe) and her family.

Starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, Donald Sutherland, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Matilda De Angelis and Noma Dumezweni
Directed by Susanne Bier
Written for television by David E. Kelley
Based on the book “You Should Have Known,” by Jean Hanff Korelitz