Television series

The Undoing

A glossy, expensive-looking marriage implodes in real time. Nicole Kidman's therapist and Hugh Grant's oncologist have the perfect Manhattan life until a murder rips through it, and the show becomes less whodunit than 'how much did she actually know?' It's soapy prestige television — gorgeous apartments, exquisite coats, a plot that rewards not thinking too hard.

TVMaze rating7.4

If you liked this

Big Little Lies2017

Same DNA almost exactly: wealthy women, a death, a community closing ranks, and a cast clearly having a wonderful time being awful to each other in beautiful houses.

But The second season sags badly, and the moral messiness can tip into melodrama if you're not in the mood.

Big Little Lies poster

Sharp Objects2018

A murkier, angrier cousin — small-town secrets, a broken family, Amy Adams giving one of the great slow-burn performances of the decade.

But Deliberately paced and genuinely bleak; there's no glamour cushioning the darkness here.

Sharp Objects poster

Gone Girl2014

The gold standard for 'marriage as crime scene' — a media-saturated whodunit that keeps flipping who you're supposed to trust, with a script as sharp as a blade.

But Its cynicism about marriage and the press is total; if you want anyone to come out looking decent, look elsewhere.

Gone Girl poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Staircase2022

It's the nonfiction blueprint The Undoing is quietly cosplaying — same premise, same unanswerable question, but this one is real and never resolves.

The true-crime documentary that basically invented this exact story: a wealthy husband, a dead spouse, a staircase, and a decade of ambiguity about what actually happened.

But No score, no gloss, no tidy ending — it's raw courtroom footage and unresolved doubt, stretched over many hours.

The Staircase poster
More like this (8)

Mare of Easttown2021

Trades Manhattan gloss for Pennsylvania grit, but the same structure applies — a death, a town, a woman who knows more than she's saying.

But Kate Winslet's accent and the deliberately unglamorous setting are a real tonal swerve from anything upscale.

Mare of Easttown poster

Presumed Innocent1990

Harrison Ford in a courtroom thriller about a prosecutor accused of murdering his mistress — the courtroom half of The Undoing done with real procedural teeth.

But It's an older, less stylised film; don't expect the visual polish or the modern pacing.

Presumed Innocent poster

The Night Of2016

Strips away the glamour entirely and asks the same question — did he do it? — with a grinding, procedural honesty about what the justice system actually does to people.

But It's slow, unglamorous, and far more interested in systemic rot than in courtroom fireworks.

The Night Of poster

A Simple Favor2018

Same glossy suburban-secrets engine but cranked into comedy — Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively trading barbs while a disappearance unravels everyone's lies.

But It's knowingly trashy and tonally slippery; if you wanted this played straight, it'll feel like a joke.

A Simple Favor poster

Anatomy of a Fall2023

A far more intelligent take on 'did my spouse do it' — a courtroom drama that interrogates a marriage with forensic patience and zero cheap thrills.

But It's subtitled, deliberately ambiguous, and offers none of the pulpy satisfaction of a tidy resolution.

Anatomy of a Fall poster

The Fall2013

Gillian Anderson as a detective hunting a killer whose home life looks disturbingly normal — a quieter, colder cousin with real menace under the surface.

But It moves slowly and spends real time inside the killer's perspective, which some viewers find uncomfortable rather than thrilling.

The Fall poster

Gaslight1944

Decades before Hugh Grant's charm curdled on screen, this film established the template: a magnetic husband, a wife slowly realising the marriage was never what it looked like.

Ingrid Bergman being psychologically dismantled by her own husband in a marriage built entirely on performance — the original glossy-marriage-hides-a-monster picture.

But Black-and-white, stagey by modern standards, and its pacing assumes a patience today's thrillers don't ask for.

Gaslight poster

The War of the Roses1989

Same engine — a gorgeous marriage revealed as rot underneath, a house full of secrets — but pushed into black comedy instead of prestige drama, proving how thin the line is.

Danny DeVito directs Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner tearing a beautiful marriage and a beautiful house to literal pieces — the same collapse, played as savage farce.

But It's genuinely mean-spirited and played for laughs, which will feel jarring if you took the marital wreckage in The Undoing seriously.

The War of the Roses poster

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