‘His & Hers’ Review: Mystery and Mourning on Netflix
Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal star in a six-part thriller about an estranged husband and wife in the wake of their child’s death.
Updated on: Jan 08, 2026 6:50 PM IST
WSJ
Share via
Copy link
A lurid tale of misadventure, moral bankruptcy and mean girls, “His & Hers” has other qualities, too, notably Tessa Thompson, whose recent turn in “Hedda” haunts her role in this potboiler. Is Anna Andrews, like Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, simply (or not so simply) a sociopath? Or is the ambitious Atlanta anchorwoman the victim of bad luck and bad people? You really don’t know. You really want to.
Tessa Thompson
One of several Alice Feeney novels now being adapted for the screen, “His & Hers” was developed for TV by the theater director William Oldroyd, who, like Ms. Feeney, is British. As a result, perhaps, he takes a different approach to the way that off-the-interstate America has been portrayed recently in, say, “Task,” or “Mare of Easttown.” For one thing, there’s money in Dahlonega, the smalltown Atlanta suburb where Anna grew up—and where, during the kind of rainstorm that dissolves evidence, a body is found on the hood of a car. The wipers are wheezing like a respirator; the soundtrack thumping like a drum roll: Everyone in town knows the dead woman, especially Anna and her estranged husband, Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), the local detective who probably shouldn’t be investigating the case.
There are good people in Dahlonega, notably Jack’s subordinate Priya Patel (a terrific Sunita Mani), who is short on experience but long on instinct. And Meg (the adorable Ellie Rose), Jack’s tiny niece, whose mother, Zoe (Marin Ireland), is a drunken wastrel and whom Jack has more or less adopted in the long-term absence of his wife and the death of their child. That crisis led Anna to disappear for an entire year, during which Jack lost his Atlanta job and moved to the Dahlonega P.D. while Anna’s anchor seat at the big-city TV station was appropriated by the leggy blonde Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse). Meanwhile, the locals continued to pursue their delightfully sordid lifestyles with a lot more personal privacy than would seem likely in smalltown America.
Jon Bernthal
No, it’s not a shockingly unconventional storyline; the mystery-thriller mechanics of “His & Hers” aren’t as novel as its abundance of sex, kinky and otherwise, and the fact that the ostensible heroes are themselves hip deep in a moral swamp. The introductory dead woman—there will be more—was Rachel, seen mostly as a teenager (Isabelle Kusman) in flashbacks to the private school where Anna and Zoe were scholarship students. The social dynamic was poisonous and the long-term legacy of bullying—and worse—is manifest in the apparent serial murders being committed in Dahlonega. It’s a character-driven enterprise, though there are a pair of concluding plot twists that, in their utter insanity, may make some viewers crazy themselves, especially those who’ve been hoodwinked by other unorthodox thriller series made by people who knew how to get into a story, but were utterly flummoxed about how to get out.
That said, there’s a lot to enjoy about “His & Hers.” The performances are absorbing, though the fact that Anna and Jack are at odds for much of the six-part series is probably fortunate, because the actors are so stylistically incompatible. Ms. Thompson, an arresting presence at all times, is pure emotional stealth. Mr. Bernthal can treat a tender moment as the opportunity to be overwrought. As twin stars of a crime drama, they’re in different orbits but convincing, Mr. Bernthal’s exchanges with Ms. Mani being particularly engaging (even if Jack is rather brusque with the guileless Priya). Ms. Thompson’s chemistry with Pablo Schreiber—who plays station cameraman and Lexy’s husband, Richard—toggles between torrid and tepid, their respective spouses being something of a distraction.
The casting, by Jeanne McCarthy and Nicole Abellera Hallman (Ms. Thompson is among the executive producers), is a real asset, to both the level of performance and the storytelling: Messrs. Bernthal and Schreiber both look like ex-prizefighters. Thus, one can presume, Anna has a type.
She also has an agenda. She wants her old job back from Lexy, she wants to protect her increasingly incompetent mother, Alice (Crystal Fox), and she’d like to get past her grief. To say whether any of this actually occurs would be a spoiler, though it would be unfair not to issue an APB that the series’ intersection with plausibility occasionally adds up to its own kind of crime scene.
