‘His & Hers’ Review: A Twisty Mess

His & Hers is the latest in Netflix’s mystery thriller miniseries output. Every year, they have quite a few of these throughout the year and once in a while they deliver something truly worth writing home about but sadly, His & Hers fits the larger category of failed endeavors. Read our review for His & Hers below.

In Dahlonega, Georgia, a woman is found dead with 40 stab wounds. We follow Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), who is assigned the case, and his estranged wife, Anna (Tessa Thompson), a reporter who has disappeared for months, who comes back to cover the news of the murder case.

The first episode is actually pretty good. It’s able to introduce the story and characters in an efficient manner, and most of all, it has a good hook to get you to come back to the second. The mystery isn’t fully introduced, but the tease is a very solid setup.

The two most important things in twisty (or really any mystery) shows are the setups and payoffs. You need to find the right balance to make it all work. His & Hers features a lot of payoffs with not a lot of setups.

Things just happen, and the show usually cites moments as being those setups that it desperately needed but they feel more like vain attempts to have the most unexpected twist ever. Truth be told, a good twist isn’t just one you didn’t expect; it’s one that is set up the entire time, and you can watch back and have an “aha” moment. None of the twists in His & Hers feels that way, despite their attempts to do so.

Sharp Objects on HBO has a similar twisty pattern, but the execution is so excellent, and it actually makes you think about the moments leading to that twist in such an exciting way that this show doesn’t do.

Another major issue is just the tone of the show. It takes itself very seriously, which is the right direction for the story at hand. The issue is that the absurd twists it goes for are anything but serious. There are moments of this show, particularly towards the end feel like they would be straight out of a parody movie. Despite that, the show continues to try to be uber-serious, which mixes about as well as oil and water.

Even outside of the twists, the show simply isn’t that interesting. The production value is all over the place, the dialogue is very spotty and the storylines just aren’t captivating in the slightest. There is nothing tense about anything that is going on, which is a cardinal sin for a show that relies on a mystery.

Admittedly, what saves this show from being unwatchable is Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson. While they do lack the necessary chemistry for it to all work, they’re both so individually excellent that it doesn’t really matter. While I wouldn’t say they’re both on their A game, they’re still doing a good enough job to keep the show engaging. Sadly for them, it’s just not enough to tip the scales.

There are some interesting elements going on here, but the uninteresting and honestly outright bad ones are what stand out in this twisty mess.

His & Hers stars Jon Bernthal, Tessa Thompson, Kristen Maxwell, Pablo Schreiber, Marin Ireland, Leah Merritt, Sunita Mani, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Crystal Fox, Chris Bauer, and Poppy Liu. The show airs on Netflix.

Thanks for reading this His & Hers review. For more, stay tuned here at Feature First.