‘His & Hers’ Review: Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal Are Let Down by Netflix’s Hollow Mystery
(L to R) Jon Bernthal as Detective Jack Harper and Tessa Thompson as Anna in Episode #101 of His & Hers. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
‘His & Hers’ wants to interrogate how stories fracture depending on who tells them — but collapses under narration, coincidence, and a mystery that was never designed to hold.
There’s a particular kind of disappointment reserved for projects that arrive with impeccable credentials and still fail to cohere. His & Hers, Netflix’s six-episode limited series adapted from Alice Feeney’s novel and directed by William Oldroyd, fits squarely into that category — not a disaster, not an embarrassment, but a slow erosion of promise.
Oldroyd’s prior work (Lady Macbeth, Eileen) demonstrated a filmmaker deeply attuned to repression, interiority, and moral rot. On paper, a dual-perspective murder mystery about grief, memory, and unreliable narration should have played directly into those strengths. Instead, His & Hers feels strangely inert, caught between literary ambition and streaming-era complacency.
The series opens in a small Georgia town where murders are rare and secrets are supposedly deep. When a local woman is brutally killed, the crime entangles nearly everyone in her orbit — most notably Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) and Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson), a disgraced journalist who returns home chasing both a story and some form of personal reckoning. Their shared past — professional, personal, and marital — is positioned as the show’s emotional engine. It never fully ignites.
(L to R) Sunita Mani as Priya and Jon Bernthal as Detective Jack Harper in Episode #101 of His & Hers. Cr. Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix
From the outset, His & Hers insists that perspective is everything. Episode-opening voiceovers hammer home the idea that truth splinters depending on who tells the story. But rather than dramatizing that tension, the series explains it — repeatedly — through narration so blunt it drains the mystery of momentum. The audience is told what to think instead of being allowed to discover it.
Structurally, the show leans heavily on coincidence. Characters “just happen” to be connected. Revelations hinge on convenience rather than causality. The victim “just happens” to have ties to both leads. Jack “just happens” to be the town’s only experienced detective. Anna “just happens” to see the case as her professional lifeline. These overlaps don’t feel tragic or inevitable — they feel lazy, substituting design for depth.
Thompson and Bernthal are tasked with selling a relationship defined almost entirely by absence. Anna disappeared for a year following personal tragedy; Jack stayed behind, emotionally stalled. On paper, that history should produce volatile intimacy. On screen, it produces distance. There is little chemistry between them, and no convincing sense of a shared past heavy enough to justify the show’s emotional stakes.
Tessa Thompson as Anna in Episode #101 of His & Hers. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
That disconnect isn’t entirely the actors’ fault. Thompson plays Anna with restraint, suggesting layers the writing never explores. Bernthal leans into Jack’s blunt frustration, but the character is written as such a consistently ineffective detective that it undercuts any authority he’s meant to have. Their scenes together feel less like two people bound by history than two performers circling a concept of intimacy the series never defines.
The supporting cast fares unevenly. Sunita Mani’s Priya, Jack’s partner, often feels like the only character reacting with appropriate confusion to the absurdity unfolding around her — grounded enough to seem as if she belongs in a different, better series. Marin Ireland brings flashes of emotional clarity to an underwritten role, while Crystal Fox is saddled with a familiar television trope that substitutes pathology for character development.
(L to R) Jon Bernthal as Detective Jack Harper and Sunita Mani as Priya in Episode #102 of His & Hers. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
Visually, His & Hers is polished but hollow. Oldroyd and co-director Anja Marquardt favor stylized lighting and glossy compositions that draw attention to themselves without deepening mood. The Georgia setting never feels specific or lived-in; it exists as atmosphere rather than place. For a story so invested in the idea that location shapes identity, the town itself remains frustratingly anonymous.
POPULAR ON THE CINEMA GROUP
What ultimately sinks the series is its finale — or rather, its refusal to commit. Instead of reframing what came before or challenging the audience’s assumptions, the conclusion reiterates themes already exhausted by narration. The ambiguity feels less provocative than indecisive, a last-minute attempt to retrofit meaning onto a story that never earned it.
There’s an irony at the heart of His & Hers: a series obsessed with the idea that everyone is lying, yet unwilling to let those lies matter. The mystery isn’t something to engage with — it’s something to endure until the show decides to explain itself.
For all its talk of duality and truth, His & Hers ends up saying very little. It isn’t aggressively bad — but it is aggressively forgettable. In the crowded ecosystem of Netflix prestige mysteries, that may be its most damning flaw.
RATING: ★★½☆☆☆
That's A Wrap
|
His & Hers [2026]
|
That's A Wrap | His & Hers [2026] |
“‘His & Hers’ wants to interrogate how stories fracture depending on who tells them — but collapses under narration, coincidence, and a mystery that was never designed to hold.”
CREDITS
Airdate: Thursday, January 8 | Netflix
Cast: Tessa Thompson, Jon Bernthal, Pablo Schreiber, Sunita Mani, Marin Ireland
Creator: William Oldroyd
Out Now: Streaming on Netflix
Rating: TV-MA
Watch The Trailer Below:
