The Undoing's popularity, explained: Viewers love watching "smug marrieds"

The New Republic

"Everybody loves to watch 'smug marrieds'—to borrow Bridget Jones’s phrase—fall apart, and if they’re rich, then all the better," says Josephine Livingstone. "That lust for schadenfreude is what sells tabloid stories about celebrity breakups, but it’s also been at the heart of some of the best-scripted screen psychodramas of the past decade. In hit book adaptations like Gone Girl and Big Little Lies and crime series like Broadchurch and The Fall, a parade of contented spouses have been shattered by the revelation that their husband or wife was simply not who they said they were but in fact a violent criminal. Why are these stories of marital reversal so engaging? Part of it is our simple appetite for a fall from grace, but another part is the way other people’s misfortunes seem like vindications of our own, different choices: I would have known, we think to ourselves, safe in our confirmation bias, and nestle further into the couch." ALSO: Donald Sutherland's spectacular Undoing apartment is a mashup of three different locations.