Pointless casting! Cowardly loyalty to a color palette! Smart people making dumb decisions! People living in amazing houses they could never afford! If you can get past all that, it's an easy-to-watch 5-hour-plus series with a reasonable twist.
First, the good. Rosalind Eleazar is great, as she is in everything. However, are we supposed to believe that Steve Pemberton is a genuinely menacing criminal genius? As much as I love him, he's just not. The character Aqua looks to be about 24 and was roommates with Kat's fiancé for 4 years - 11 years ago? When she was what, 9? Brendan is supposed to be 19? It's all SO DUMB. I know it's not meant to be all gritty and hyper-realistic, but please make it a little easier to suspend our disbelief. It would make some of her regrettable decisions easier to swallow.
Stars: Rosalind Eleazar, Ashley Walters, Mary Malone
And look, it was wonderful about 8 or 10 years ago when we started seeing a specific color palette being dedicated throughout a series or movie. A Cure for Wellness, for example. As a marketer, I wholeheartedly approved of it. But is it time to move on? It's almost oddly distracting.
Whatever part of England this series is set in, I want to move there. On a perfectly normal salary, I could afford a spectacular detached house with a character. And with land! I know it's probably better to see beautiful places than squashed new-build townhouses, but see my earlier request: make it easier for us to suspend our disbelief, not harder.
Honestly, if you can see past all that, it's a pretty entertaining and suspenseful series. If you've seen other Harlan Coben Netflix adaptations, it's exactly what you should expect. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, unless you're a grumpy old lady like me.
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