Nicole Kidman’s nest of arrogant, pill-popping back-biters in The Perfect Couple is wickedly entertaining, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

When Nicole Kidman bares her teeth in a smile, glass shatters. Birds fall out of the sky and dogs cower. Her own eyeballs frost over.

Mere humans can’t hear the super-high soundwaves her smiles generate, but the US could use those ultrasonic frequencies as a weapon of doom.

We see a lot of her perma-white teeth in The Perfect Couple, the glossy Netflix thriller that’s as addictive as it is superficial. ­Kidman plays the character she has perfected in a series of TV dramas, from Big Little Lies to Nine Perfect Strangers and Expats – sickeningly wealthy, ­bitterly unhappy.

This time, she’s bestselling ­novelist Greer Garrison Winbury, who married into one of ­America’s richest old families. She vibrates with insecurity. Her only moral code is snobbery: she judges everyone by their bank balance, fame and family background.

When one of her sons remarks she places too much value on, ‘who you went to school with, or whether you’re on the guest list for Malia’s wedding’, she becomes childishly excited for a moment.