The Dinner Club Review 2026 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
“The Dinner Club” (a far more obvious translation than “The Perfect Lie”) is a mediocre mystery with a suicide (or murder) and an accidental fall (or attempted murder) to be solved within a close-knit group of four wealthy couples who live and party hard together. They all have young children and look out for each other. One of the couples also has a teenage son who works at the beachfront gym.
The beachfront gym, originally owned by Evert and Babette but now co-owned by another couple in the group, Simon and Patricia, plays a pivotal role in the story. Patricia’s uber rich father has sunk a sizeable investment into the business which keeps expanding but perhaps too quickly.
It starts out with the group being interviewed by the local police detectives in relation to a fire that has totally burned down Evert and Babette’s home and left Evert dead and the assumption that he has drugged his family and committed suicide.
Each member of the group shares their version of the events leading up to the fire but since they are all interviewed again later after another member of the group ends up in hospital, it becomes very confusing to keep up with the ever-changing, non-linear timeline.
The series is nicely shot and reeking with opulence. Lavish parties with outrageous costumes, food and wine. They all seem to be cordon bleu chefs and have access to the best caterers in the country. The women in the club also have a fondness for skinny dipping together.
The cast is excellent and well directed but, for me, the non-linear timeline is its major downfall. I generally don’t mind flashbacks when used wisely and specifically and I can usually follow the story without having to be told it’s a flashback. But this one had me unclear on many occasions and there was no need for it to be so chopped up and disjointed other than mask a weak plot.
Based on a novel, the episodes devoted to each of the surviving characters may have been easier to follow in the book but on screen it just became a huge muddle. There wasn’t enough of a differentiation between the stories of each individual character to warrant going backwards and forwards in time to the extent they do. I think the mysteries would have been solved in more than half the time with a linear timeline.
It got tiring trying to figure out which interrogation was taking place and were important nuggets of information being revealed before or after Evert’s death depending on whose episode we were supposedly in. They all ran together and I only gleaned a few additional titbits of information with each repetition.
It could certainly have been tightened up since the subplots of the young children in school and classes happening at the gym etc., were superfluous to the main mysteries but they did give us a bigger picture than just focusing on the crimes themselves. There wasn’t much character development though probably in order to prevent revealing anything too soon.
Evert’s murder is solved in the final episode but the second incident is not so, disappointingly, the series ends with a cliffhanger. I’m sure they are anticipating a second season but I would have been happier to have both “crimes” resolved. These characters are not likeable enough for me to watch a second season and I can’t imagine what more they could do. It would have only taken two more minutes to reveal the identity of the visitor and whether or not they were there to finish the job.
