The Couple Next Door Cast Talks the Dark Secrets of Suburbia

The picturesque suburban setting of the Starz psychological thriller The Couple Next Door is essentially a character in its own right. A status symbol, an indicator of affluence, a sign of a certain degree of conformity and expectation, the idyllic Leeds community at the center of this story certainly appears (at least initially) as though it’s perfect in every way. That perceived perfection is a big reason that primary schoolteacher Evie (Eleanor Tomlinson) and her husband Pete (Alfred Enoch) move into their new neighborhood in the first place, though they quickly discover that its seemingly flawless veneer hides many unexpected secrets. 

“I have this thought of the suburbs being a sort of in-between place, right? It’s neither country nor the city, it’s this kind of liminal space that’s neither quite singing one tune or another,” Alfred Enoch, who plays Pete, tells Paste about the appeal of suburbia as a setting. “It’s the place to set a story that’s a little bit unsettled and that is about the space between appearance and reality. It appears as though it’s a comfortable idyllic place, but ultimately that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s an illusion.”

Much of our collective cultural obsession with suburbia boils down to simple nosiness. We love to see what the neighbors are doing, to compare our lives to theirs, to see what they have that we don’t. The Couple Next Door is hardly the first series to play with the blurred lines between our cultural expectations of suburban life and its reality. However, by focusing on two very different couples and the tangled relationship that develops between them, it approaches these familiar themes from a fresh perspective.

Almost as soon as they move into their new home, Evie and Pete are befriended by their hot neighbors, traffic cop Danny (Sam Heughan) and his yoga inspector wife Becka (Jessica De Gouw), an attractive couple whose marriage turns out to be more nuanced than it initially appears in ways that both fascinate and titillate the newcomers.

“It’s fun to observe different kinds of lives. That’s why we watch television and movies. That’s why we tell stories because we want to watch how other people walk through life, and I think this [show] is a good example of that,” Jessica De Gouw, who plays Becka, says. “On the outside, it may look one way, but the truth and the nuances of people’s lives are often very different. And look, we’re all a bit voyeuristic, aren’t we? I’m always curious about what’s happening on the street and, oh, look, what’s that party? It’s exciting as well, especially when you get this kind of intimate look into people’s lives, you kind of can’t stop.” 

The show leans into this idea of voyeurism, showing us multiple scenes of various neighbors essentially spying on one another: Pete learns about Danny and Becka’s sexual escapades because he sees another couple arrive at their house to hook up. Creepy neighbor Alan (Hugh Dennis) uses a telescope to peer into his fellow residents’ homes. And the world of social media also offers an ever-present, if carefully curated, digital window into how people present themselves.

“There’s a uniformity, I think, that’s presented in this suburban street, but I think the idea is really that it could be any suburban street,” Sam Heughan, who plays Danny, adds. “There’s a uniformity that people have these sort of set houses and they’re all kind of the same and they all have—at least on the exterior—the same lifestyle. But what is happening underneath?”

In many ways, The Couple Next Door wants to play with the disconnect between what these characters’ lives look like and the people underneath the facade they present to the world. The show, on some level, is counting on its audience to make certain assumptions about what we’re seeing and judge accordingly. 

“It goes back to society and the idea of what we expect and how appearances work,” Heughan says. “Initially, you might think [Danny and Becka] are the ones that are salacious and up to no good. And in some ways Danny is, but ultimately I think it’s turning the idea on its head a little bit and making us question: why are we scared of the unknown? Why are we scared of people that live outside of the norm?” 

Evie and Pete find themselves caught up in their neighbor’s unexpected, rule-bending lifestyle that includes everything from drunken barbeques and regular drug use to a non-traditional marriage in which they regularly invite other couples into their bedroom for some extramarital fun. But to the likely surprise of many watching, Danny and Becka’s marriage is a surprisingly strong one, despite the external issues revealed over the course of the six-episode series. 

“I think when we first meet them, they’re perhaps at a place of complacency in their wider lives,” Jessica De Gouw, who plays Becka, says. “But as a couple they have worked really hard to establish a relationship on their own terms. It’s quite hard to subvert what society expects of you. But I think what we always wanted to make sure was very clear was this real history and the very deep love they still have for one another. We wanted to champion them and their love and to do it without judgment.”