An
HBO 2020 miniseries, based on
You Should Have Known (2014) by Jean Hanff Korelitz. A well-respected psychiatrist, Grace (
Nicole Kidman) learns that her much-loved paediatrician husband Jonathan (
Hugh Grant) had secrets after he is accused of the murder of a woman at their son Henry's (
Noah Jupe) school.
Tropes include:
- Adaptation Expansion: The show focuses more on the mystery than the book (which reveals Elena's killer fairly early, at least to everyone but Grace, and is mostly about the aftereffects of the murder). It also features Jonathan more prominently, as well as adding courtroom scenes and Jonathan kidnapping Henry and almost jumping off a bridge.
- Affably Evil: Jonathan is never anything less than totally polite and genial, even when he's lying to Grace's face, convincing her that his son could have committed the murder, and lying about letting his sister die.
- Casting Gag: Nicole Kidman plays another affluent redhead with a charming, affluent husband, who is hiding a serious dark side, just as in Big Little Lies. Though in the former show, he's the murder victim, while he's the murderer here.
- Chekhov's Gun: Henry's violin. Or rather, the case. He has the hammer in it.
- Cliffhanger Copout: All the flashes of Grace killing Elena are pure ImagineSpots.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: A psychologist, who's supposed to be an expert on human thought and behavior doesn't realize her own husband is cheating on her.
- Contrived Coincidence: It's a total Red Herring that Grace was walking near Elena's studio. She wasn't linked to her death.
- Dashing Hispanic: Elena's hotheaded husband, with whom she had aggressive fights.
- Extremely Protective Child: Henry is so intensely protective of Grace and Jonathan that he keeps it secret that he found the murder weapon, the hammer, and keeps it in his violin case.
- Hapless Self-Help: In the book only, psychiatrist Grace has written a book called You Should Have Known, which is a self-help book about the ways people delude themselves about aspects of their life. She is completely oblivious to the fact that her husband Jonathan is a serial cheater who is secretly unemployed and murdered his mistress.
- May–December Romance: Jonathan has an affair with Elena, a woman young enough she could be his daughter (his actor Hugh Grant is thirty five years older than actress Matilda De Angelis portraying Elena), even fathering a baby with her. She possibly Likes Older Men, but it may be that he (initially) just treated Elena much nicer than her husband, who she fights with constantly.
- The Mistress: Elena has been Jonathan's girlfriend for over a year at least (as he turns out to be the father of her infant son), while both are married to other people.
- Ms. Fanservice: Elena gets naked a lot, and she is shown this way both before and after her death.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Since Elena was cheating on her hot-tempered husband with a married man, those two are, of course, the front-runners to be the murderer, particularly since one of them just skipped town. But obviously, it's not that simple. The husband has an alibi, which leaves Jonathan as the clear choice. Despite several twists that briefly implicate other characters, this trope is subverted: it was him after all.
- Police Are Useless: The police ostensibly tell Grace to stay back when Jonathan is threatening to jump off the bridge, but nobody actually stops her.
- Race Lift: Grace is Jewish in the book, and her reaching for touchstones of Jewish culture for comfort is a minor plot point; in the show she is not. Elena, while still Latina, is played by a light-skinned actress when in the book she has brown skin.
- Riddle for the Ages: It's never confirmed whether Jonathan deliberately killed his sister or simply had no reaction when she accidentally died.
- Spicy Latina: Elena is a mentally unbalanced Ms. Fanservice Latina character who is sleeping with Jonathan and very aggressive about it.
- Unconfessed Unemployment: Jonathan lied to Grace about losing his job at the hospital because of sleeping with Elena.
