Missing You review: Television for the shattered attention span

Based on legend, Alexander the Nice, on his conquest throughout Asia, encountered an oxcart within the Phrygian metropolis of Gordium. The oxcart was tethered by a knot of such staggering intricacy that the locals had vowed to swear fealty to anybody who might unravel it. Twist after twist had solid the knot, and solely the best of minds might unpick it. The Gordian knot, although, was nothing in comparison with the mass of tangles created some 2,356 years later, by American writer Harlan Coben, whose newest messy thriller, Lacking You, arrives this week on Netflix.

Rosalind Eleazar – a nice supporting actor on exhibits like Harlots and Gradual Horses – is Kat Thompson, a detective inspector someplace in nameless, semi-urban Britain. A few years in the past, her father Clint (Lenny Henry), himself a celebrated copper, was murdered, and Kat has lived within the shadow of that trauma. Then, all of sudden, issues begin to occur: she receives phrase that her father’s convicted killer Monte (Marc Warren) has days to reside, whereas her ex-fiancé Josh (Ashley Walters), who ghosted her a decade in the past, exhibits up on a relationship app. Instantly, Kat finds herself scratching away on the lies she’s been advised. “Pushing at this door is just not going to convey your father again,” her boss, Sergeant Stagger (Richard Armitage), tells her. Nevertheless it would possibly convey her a step nearer to understanding how he died.

Coben variations on Netflix are large enterprise, apparently. At first of the yr, Idiot Me As soon as proved a rankings hit regardless of a plot so daft that even ChatGPT would disavow it. That challenge attracted expertise like Michelle Keegan, Joanna Lumley and Adeel Akhtar – and the solid is much more stacked right here. Along with the leads, there’s the stunt-casting of Busted bassist Matt Willis and TikToker GK Barry, in addition to Steve Pemberton, deliciously deployed to chew the surroundings as a murderous canine breeder, and James Nesbitt, making a return to the Coben Televisual Universe as grinning mob boss Calligan. “A lion takes down a gazelle,” Calligan warns Kat. “That’s the world God made, prefer it or not.” The true query, then, is who’s a lion, and who’s a gazelle?

Writing duties on this sequence have been offloaded from Danny Brocklehurst (who nonetheless serves as an government producer) to Victoria Asare-Archer, but it doesn’t mark a lot of a inventive shift. Characters nonetheless discuss like they’re encountering human life for the primary time (“Refusing to tidy up within the twenty first century is a daring act of feminism,” Kat chuckles, like, you understand, a human), and relationships appear primarily primarily based on the alternate of doubtless devastating info. Eleazar does her finest to raise Kat above a relentless scowl, however the materials retains throwing her extra causes to frown. Extra confusion, extra betrayal, extra hazard.

In fact, no one, at this level, watches a Harlan Coben adaptation for the gripping interpersonal chemistry. That is tv for the shattered consideration span. Each jiffy there’s a brand new twist to set off the dopamine receptors in your mind and attempt to preserve you from doom scrolling on Instagram for one more jiffy, till the subsequent twist. There’s a type of mental dishonesty to basing a lot of your narrative on defective info, however viewers received’t care as long as the cliffhangers and gasp-inducing revelations preserve coming. It’s not refined, however it’s efficient. And, in any case, how did Alexander clear up the riddle of the Gordian knot? He sliced by means of it with a sword.

All the identical, whereas there’s something environment friendly concerning the supply of thrills in Lacking You, it’s too silly and too manipulative to be inspired. The viewers response to Netflix’s spate of Coben variations – to not point out their modest budgets – means they’ll preserve coming, and little effort will probably be made so as to add new dimensions to the characters or sense to the proceedings. Inside these constraints, Lacking You is just not as unhealthy because it might have been – however not half pretty much as good because it actually must be.