***This review contains spoilers.
With six 50-minute episodes, Netflix’s new limited series “His & Hers” adapts its source novel into a slow-burning mystery released just in time for the new year. After watching, I’m happy to report that thrillers are so back.
In typical murder mystery fashion, viewers are thrust into a small, middle-of-nowhere town where a woman’s body was recently found in the woods. What sets “His & Hers” apart from other shows of a similar nature is how it continues from there.
On the surface, “His & Hers” presents itself as a dual-perspective mystery alternating between two characters, reporter Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) and detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal). In episode one, it’s revealed that Andrews and Harper are married, making it clear that the audience is in for a wild emotional ride. But the show’s controlled disclosure of plot points is even more compelling than such twists. Nothing is rushed. Instead, we see the answers ourselves and then connect the dots.
Take the crime scene clues. Investigators mention men’s footprints: big boots, size 10. Who wears that size 10 shoe? The camera pans to Harper’s niece awkwardly slipping into boots far too big for her feet and lugging them upstairs to his room. No explanation. Just the quiet satisfaction of realization.
That same restraint defines one of the show’s most emotionally loaded threads. Harper and Andrews lose their baby before the events of the series, a tragedy that fractures their marriage. Initially, the absence of details about the child’s death felt frustrating. But a grieving mother wouldn’t casually recount the worst moment of her life, especially in a town where everyone already knows.
Spelling out that plotline earlier would have felt performative, included only for the audience’s benefit. Letting the truth surface at the end instead made the reveal far more powerful and signals careful, thoughtful writing.
Andrews herself is a force. “She’s pushy, that one,” one character remarks, and the label fits. She’s ambitious and sharp, and it’s refreshing to see a TV show let a Black woman lead with that kind of complexity. Harper, by contrast, is a lot slower. He’s got that Southern charm necessary for the audience to care about the love story the show wants us to buy. His decisions irritated me, but there can’t be drama without some bad choices.
Now, whodunit? That reveal doesn’t arrive until the final twenty minutes of the series. I thought I had it figured out. I didn’t. That’s the mark of a mystery doing its job.
On a scale of limited series from 1 to 10, I’d give “His & Hers” an eight. On the scale of “making me binge it in one day,” though, it’s a clear 10.
