Susanne Bier is the director of The Undoing, an HBO miniseries based on Jean Hanff Korelitz‘s “You Should Have Known“, apparently a “deeds of evil duplicitous husband are traumatically revealed to strong-willed but deluded wife” airport novel for women.

Bier’s The Night Manager miniseries was respected and well received, and she was, I felt, in a truly excellent feature groove during the aughts (Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding, Things We Lost in the Fire, In a Better World). But this new project feels like trouble. The trailer suggests a difficult sit.

Amazon boilerplate with Kidman and Grant’s names inserted: “The somewhat arrogant Grace (Nicole Kidman), a tough-talking marriage counselor, has written a book for wives, ‘You Should Have Known”, to kinda sorta blame them for not recognizing things about their husbands. You know the saying ‘physician, heal thyself”? You can see where this novel is going.

“What Grace didn’t know about her own husband Mike (Hugh Grant) is the stuff of this long, drawn-out novel. Grace never suspected that Mike, an esteemed pediatric oncologist, could be a liar. Or worse. For someone who scorned women for not realizing their husbands lied and held secrets, Grace was about as clueless as a popsicle, maybe more so.”