The Couple Next Door is guilty-pleasure TV at its best and worst

The Couple Next Door often feels like a sloppy Wattpad romance come to life—that is, the British series, which premieres in the U.S. on Starz, is totally detached from reality. The show’s interest is in being glossy and provocative, plot holes or continuity errors be damned. And yet The Couple Next Door is oddly compelling for that very same reason, with its derivative scripts and heightened performances making for a bemusing experience. It’s not good TV, but it certainly is good trash TV. 

Based on a Dutch drama, the show wants to tear down suburbia’s flawless facade through the lens of two married couples with very different lifestyles. When their worlds collide, it wreaks havoc on their relationships and exposes long-buried secrets. If this all sounds like a version of Desperate Housewives, know that it takes less than five minutes into the show’s premiere for a character to reference the ABC series. The Couple Next Door wants to be titillating and mysterious and even tosses in a Fatal Attraction-esque arc. But its erotic aspects come off as vanilla, and the thriller angle is executed poorly. 

TCND unravels from the start when primary-school teacher Evie (Eleanor Tomlinson) and her journalist husband Pete (Alfred Enoch) move into a new home and quickly befriend their hot married neighbors, traffic cop Danny Whitwell (Sam Heughan) and his wife, yoga teacher Becka (Jessica De Gouw). How they manage to afford upmarket houses with those professions is anyone’s guess, but it’s one of many ways TCND plays out as a fantasy.

Immediately, Evie is attracted to Danny, with the two exchanging coy glances as he helps them unload their furniture. After suffering a tragedy, Evie and Pete come to rely solely on the Whitwells for support. And that level of comfort takes a fascinating turn after Danny and Becka reveal that they’re swingers. They’ve been in a happy non-monogamous marriage for years, a concept that intrigues the religiously raised and repressed Evie. Her interest in exploring these sudden sexual desires leads to complicated entanglements, with all four folks feeling different levels of lust and love for each other. 

To give TCND a little credit, it does attempt to study Evie’s psychological damage as a woman whose strictly devout parents picked apart all her decisions. She’s been taught to be morally righteous and has only ever been involved with Pete. In front of her now lies real temptation so passion overtakes virtue. But the writing only scratches the surface of this before regressing into stereotypes. That said, Tomlinson is captivating as her character spirals from a goody two-shoes into an obsessive cliché. De Gouw is also a standout with an effortless performance that makes Becka seem like the only normal person in this group, warts and all. 

Heughan and Enoch are fine, making the most out of material that doesn’t dare to give their characters much interiority or, in Pete’s case, even a personality and family backstory. God forbid the journalist has a life outside of chasing leads and sitting in a mostly empty office all day. The cast also includes comedian Hugh Dennis as Alan, who resides on the same street and is a grade-A perv stalking Becka. (Mild spoiler alert: A scene of Alan having a heart attack is the funniest moment of the show. And it’s this type of unseriousness that makes TCND weirdly watchable.)  

The going gets tough once the erotic thriller angle—its saving grace— is shed in favor of laughably predictable, meandering subplots like Danny’s foray into corruption that ties into Pete’s investigative reporting. There’s also a glaring issue of producers not springing for extras because TCND is empty (in more ways than one) with barely any other people around. A lot of its storylines don’t end coherently either. Ultimately, The Couple Next Door is as mindless as it gets, but that’s exactly what makes it a bit of fun escapism.  

The Couple Next Door premieres January 17 on Starz