There’s something immediately intriguing about watching a seemingly normal woman get brought into a police station and asked to tell her story.
Why is she there? What happened? And how much of what she’s about to tell us is actually true?
That’s how Netflix’s Dutch limited series The Perfect Lie Season 1 Episode 1 introduces Karen, and initially, it was enough to get my attention.
A luxury villa has burned to the ground. Evert, one of Karen’s friends, is dead. His wife Babette and their children barely survived. Karen isn’t a suspect, just a witness, but something about this whole thing clearly isn’t right.
Great. I’m in.
Or at least I thought I was.
Because about nine minutes into “Karen,” I was already considering tapping out.
Somebody Get Me Across the River of Molasses
I don’t need every show to start with a murder, car chase and exploding helicopter. I can handle a slow burn.
But you’ve still got to give me something to burn.
The Perfect Lie takes its sweet-ass time getting Karen and her family settled into their new home in Bergen and introducing the wealthy group of couples who will eventually become known to us as the dinner club.
Meanwhile, the interrogation periodically interrupts the flashbacks to remind us that eventually somebody is going to be dead.
Eventually.
I was trying really hard to hang in there. What kept me from giving up was Karen herself.
She’s the outsider in this world, but she’s not exactly arriving with a clean slate. Karen was editor-in-chief of a news program before being placed on administrative leave over misconduct allegations. She doesn’t want to discuss what happened with the police, and she apparently hasn’t been completely forthcoming with her husband Michel, either.
So before we even find out what everybody else is hiding, we know Karen has secrets of her own.
And then it gets even more interesting especially when everybody starts taking their clothes off. Well, okay. Now what the hell is this?
Welcome to the Dinner Club. Apparently Clothing Is Optional.
Karen meets Hanneke, Patricia and Babette, women who have known one another for years and clearly have their own established social hierarchy.
Karen is the newbie. And you can feel it.
She doesn’t quite belong. She’s uncomfortable. Patricia in particular seems judgmental of her. Then the women start stripping down and jumping into the pool, encouraging Karen to join them.
Karen has roughly the same reaction I did. Is this a dinner club or a sex club?
She eventually joins the fun without going quite as far as everybody else, but the entire thing starts establishing something much more interesting than simply Look at These Wacky Rich People.
These people don’t seem to have normal boundaries. And Karen is fascinated by them.
That’s important because she’s not simply the sensible outsider observing a bunch of lunatics from a safe distance. There’s something about their lifestyle that appeals to her.
You see it even more once Karen and Michel are invited to Patricia’s extravagant birthday party.
Michel initially isn’t impressed with any of these people. Karen seems more curious, but both of them are clearly outsiders trying to find their footing among people with more money, bigger houses and a much different idea of a good time.
And then the cocaine comes out.
Before long everybody is high, drunk, dancing, flirting and kissing people they aren’t married to.
Babette has Karen licking coke from her finger. Simon, Patricia’s husband, is openly interested in Karen. Karen isn’t exactly discouraging him. Evert and Simon are kissing.
Holy Hell, people. I thought this was a dinner club.
And somewhere along the way, Karen and Michel stop standing outside the party looking in because they decide to join in the fun.
Karen Wants Into This World
That’s what finally got me.
I’m less interested in the debauchery itself than I am in why Karen is so willing to be absorbed into it.
She and Michel have just uprooted their lives. She’s dealing with whatever happened at work. She’s carrying something she doesn’t want to discuss. Now she’s been dropped into this strange little community of wealthy people who seem to live without many rules.
Is Karen bored with her old life? Trying to reinvent herself? Desperate to fit in? Looking for an escape from whatever happened before she moved?
Maybe all of the above, and Simon certainly doesn’t hurt.
The two are very obviously attracted to one another, and Karen seems to enjoy the attention. By the time they’re flirting at a summer solstice celebration with everybody wandering around wearing flower wreaths, I’m starting to wonder whether Karen has joined a dinner club or stumbled into some kind of rich-person cult.
Michel notices something between them eventually, but he’s a puzzle too. This is a guy who wasn’t particularly impressed with these people when he met them. A little alcohol and cocaine later, he’s carrying on like he’s been part of the group for years.
Maybe that’s all it is. Or maybe there’s something about this group that makes people want to belong.
Who’s Married to Who Again?
I will say Episode 1 doesn’t make following this collection of people particularly easy.
It throws several couples at us fairly quickly, some of the women look similar enough that I initially mixed them up, and everybody is busy flirting with people they aren’t married to.
For a while, I was trying to remember who belonged to whom while simultaneously wondering whether “belonged to” was even how this dinner club operated.
But eventually the relationships start clicking into place, and that’s also when the mystery gets considerably better.
Because we already know where all this partying leads.
Evert dies in the fire. Babette and the children end up hospitalized with drugs in their systems. Police recover a voice message suggesting Evert confessed to something shortly before his death.
And everybody seems shocked.
Of course, by this point, I don’t trust a f*cking one of them.
Everybody Has Something to Hide
That’s where The Perfect Lie finally crosses the River of Molasses and becomes the show I thought I was getting at the beginning.
All that social maneuvering starts looking different once there’s a dead body sitting in the middle of it.
These people have history.
They have affairs, attractions, resentments and secrets Karen knows nothing about yet.
And then Hanneke listens to a message she’d previously sent Evert, telling him that Babette needs to go and she’ll help him get rid of her.
Well, that’s not suspicious at all.
By the end, things start clicking into place: Evert’s death, Babette and the drugs found in her system (though why her kids do is still a mystery,) the fire, and the message on Hanneke’s phone that would be rather difficult to explain over coffee.
So, it’s easy to conclude that whatever happened inside this group started long before Karen arrived.
The fun is that Karen isn’t entering the mystery as some squeaky-clean detective who’s going to expose everyone else’s lies. She’s already lying too.
That’s a much more interesting setup.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
Nine minutes into The Perfect Lie, I was dangerously close to tapping out.
By the end, I wanted Episode 2.
That’s a pretty good turnaround.
This is definitely a slow burn, and S1E1: “Karen” occasionally makes you work harder than I’d like just to keep track of everybody. But once the dinner club starts revealing itself as something much stranger than a bunch of wealthy couples getting together for dinner, the mystery finally gets its hooks in.
Karen has secrets. Her new friends have secrets. Everybody seems to be sleeping with, lying to, protecting or hiding something from somebody else.
And there’s a dead guy in the middle of it.
I’m glad I made it across the River of Molasses.
Now I need to know what the hell kind of dinner club this actually is.
Read All Our The Perfect Lie Season 1 Coverage
- The Perfect Lie S1E1: Karen
- The Perfect Lie S1E2: Hanneke
- The Perfect Lie S1E3: Simon
- The Perfect Lie S1E4: Michel
- The Perfect Lie S1E5: Patricia
- The Perfect Lie S1E6: Babette
- The Perfect Lie S1E7: Ivo
