Alice Feeney gave book lovers His & Hers, a murder mystery taking place in a suspiciously quaint British town called Blackdown. Anja Marquandt, William Oldroyd, and their writers move the setting to Dahlonega, Georgia, keeping the murder intact. Reporter Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) sleeps with cameraman Richard Jones (Pablo Schreiber), someone knocking on their door. She explains to Richard that that’s Dahlonega detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), who is actually her estranged husband. Both are doing their separate investigation of the murder of Rachel (Jamie Tisdale), who is Jack’s lover. Rachel is also Anna’s friend from a private high school so she’s looking like a suspect as well.

I mean this in the best way, but most media are exercises where characters want opposing things. This is true for this miniseries but with a twist – both Anna and Jack are excitingly terrible people. Sometimes characters get what they want, like when Anna baits Jack into giving him confidential case information. And sometimes they don’t, like when she returns to work only to find Richard’ wife Lexy (Rebecca Rittenhouse) replacing her. Or when she interviews Helen Wang (Poppy Liu), a good old friend turned bitter enemy. This miniseries has the right blend of meanness, or maybe I just like hearing mean girl dialogue. It helps that His & Hers gives us a break from mean girls through Anna’s mother Alice (Crystal Fox).

Yes, I should read more books, but I hope Feeney’s writing is as funny as this adaptation. And again, the enjoyable mean streak in His & Hers permeates through later episodes as its plot evolves. Anna convinces Dahlonega’s Mayor (Jason Davis) to hold a town hall meeting in hopes to control its narrative. But she’s doing this so that both Dahlonega and Jack look terrible in front of the camera. The more Jack talks, the more suspicious he is, especially in front of his partner Priya (Sumita Mani). Performance wise, Jack is within Bernthal’s wheelhouse, making an unsympathetic cop look vulnerable on our streaming screens. Thompson also gives viewers her brand of cool line deliveries to a character who, like everyone else, is hiding something.

Things don’t go well for His & Hers’ protagonists and part of the fun is anticipating their possible wins. Jack, maybe as a move to exonerate himself, tries to pin the murder on someone suspiciously familiar. Maybe it’s always the husband Clyde Duffy (Chris Bauer) who resents that Rachel sleeps around on him. As an act of jealousy, he runs a background check on Richard and unsurprisingly, Richard has his secrets. The supporting characters have their wins too, like Priya who sees that Anna can be a viable suspect. Characters lurk in the nighttime which, despite modern photography trends, doesn’t look like shit. All of these add up to a pulpy ride, Netflix giving us viewers a decent beginning to 2026.