'His & Hers' review: New Netflix murder mystery stretched thin, too obvious

WHAT IT'S ABOUT A small-town murder entraps a TV anchor (Tessa Thompson) and a detective (Jon Bernthal) in "His & Hers," a six-episode adaptation of a 2020 novel by Alice Feeney. 

Anna, the anchor, has just begun to emerge from a personal tragedy and its fallout when she learns about the murder of her childhood friend Rachel. Meanwhile, Bernthal's Jack must work the case, despite his own hidden connections to the victim. Oh, and wouldn't you know it? Anna and Jack have some deep ties too, ties that are revealed early in the series, but which we'll leave for the viewer to discover.

The show arrives on Netflix courtesy of William Oldroyd, the British filmmaker whose last movie, "Eileen," starred Anne Hathaway.

MY SAY This is the sort of story that used to serve as fodder for a midbudget movie, released in theaters for an adult audience that Hollywood has now largely stopped pursuing, at least on the big screen.

But there's still an enormous appetite for this sort of thing in the Netflix universe. So "His & Hers" arrives in the classic limited series streaming format, joining a multitude of murder mystery counterparts across the digital universe.

And it suffers from the same problem that has stricken more than a few of its predecessors. This is an adaptation of one book, stretched across six episodes. There's not enough to this narrative to sustain even the three episodes this critic watched, let alone the entire series.

It works in the most basic fashion, if the whole standard for success amounts to generating enough interest in the fundamental mystery to compel a weekend binge. Thompson ("Westworld") and Bernthal ("The Punisher") are fine, veteran actors who know how to dig below the surface of their characters. The evocation of lingering past trauma and its impact on the case has the potential to amount to something.

But so much of this feels so familiar, so rote, so expected.

It goes through the usual paces, introducing characters who exist only to serve as potential suspects. Otherwise, there's simply no reason for any of the subplots.

The depiction of Dahlonega, Georgia, makes it seem like a generic murder-mystery small town. There's not a strong sense of place, a feeling for the pace and texture of life here. It might as well be a studio backlot.

The buried secrets seem pretty obvious, pretty quickly. Again, without divulging too much, the ethical quandaries facing the main characters, especially Jack, are the same essential dilemmas we've seen a thousand times before. They inspire them to do the usual poorly thought-out things to protect themselves, with predictably bad consequences.

It all floats along, watchable enough as far as it goes. It unfolds in that middle ground somewhere between utter boredom and compelling entertainment. But you can do better than that.

BOTTOM LINE It could be worse.