New year, new predictable – and strangely irresistible – thriller from bestselling author Harlan Coben on Netflix.
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
This television puzzle, clearly not a 1000 pieces, is called Missing You – I miss youin French version – and it has been prances since it was put online on 1is January.
Missing You falls into the category of popcorn TV that is consumed extremely quickly, but which does not leave an indelible memory in our heads. It’s very decent as a crime thriller, really effective, except that Harlan Coben’s repetitive formula means that his latest miniseries is very similar to the previous one (Fool Me Once), which was similar to the other one before (Stay Close), modeled on the oldest (The Stranger).
This formula of “whodunit” (who did it?), a classic of the doyenne Agatha Christie, works thoroughly. Who doesn’t love these deep stories about wealthy white-collar workers, who live in wealthy English suburbs and who hide terrible secrets?
That’s Harlan Coben. With a lot of false leads, spectacular dramatic twists, as well as suspicions which target, at one time or another, each of the protagonists.
In Missing Yousingle detective Kat Donovan reconnects, on a dating app, with her ex-fiance Josh, who disappeared into the mist 11 years ago, without leaving a trace, explanation or address, babye. A real asshole.
Worse still: the cursed Josh “ghosted” poor Kat shortly before the villainous murder of her dad, a cop in the same police force as her.
Of course the song Missing You by John Waite was screwed to the heart of the story. First, it’s a karaoke staple for Kat and Josh. And it’s a zero subtle reference to Kat’s job, running the missing persons division of the police in a city like Manchester, ta-dam!
As the original recipe requires, a punch marks the end of each episode of Missing Youwhich automatically propels us into the next one, until the five hours are completely absorbed.
I devoured the entire miniseries and I barely remember anything about the storyline because it went so quickly.
From memory, Kat investigates strangers, whose disappearance is linked, not very credibly, to the assassination of her dad or the resurrection of her ex-boyfriend. It’s a very small world, you have to believe.
Around Kat gravitate a breeder of purebred dogs, a perceptive prison nurse, a lying best friend, a private detective with dubious methods, a terminally ill criminal steeped in remorse, a charismatic mafia boss and a far too responsible 18-year-old teenager. .
The killer or murderess, like a game of Clue, appears in the list of characters I have listed in this column. Harlan Coben is not reinventing the wheel, which is reaching the end of its road.
Because the huge contract that binds the popular American writer to Netflix for the adaptation of 14 of his books is coming to an end: only four remain to be manufactured. It’s quite right that this agreement is ending. ChatGPT could almost write the next chapters for a pittance.
Speaking of thrillers on TV, I started watching the miniseries Disclaimer from Apple TV+ during the holiday break. Psychological thriller directed by the brilliant filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, And your mom too) with Cate Blanchett in the lead role, honestly, it was a great seller.
By the third episode out of a total of seven, something was bothering me. I was vaguely aware of this mysterious and twisting affair without being able to pinpoint its origin. Then, looking at the title of the show in French, Revealedeverything came to a head. Disclaimer is Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of the gripping novel Revealed by Renée Knight, which I read when it was published in 2015.
Thank goodness my hard drive had erased large chunks of the plot which revolves around an investigative journalist (Cate Blanchett), whose personal and professional life is turned upside down when an enigmatic book lands on her desk.
This book, written under a pseudonym, exposes dark events from the past of this renowned journalist, which she had hidden from everyone around her, even from her husband (Sacha Baron Cohen).
Obviously, the documentary journalist goes out of her way to unmask the anonymous author of the book and prevent him from further sullying her reputation. At the same time, the writer, who exercises a well-calculated revenge, makes sure to expose the true face of the journalist, more twisted than the one she offers to the media.
For seven one-hour episodes, Disclaimer goes back in time and shows pieces of the journalist’s secret, buried on an Italian beach, 20 years ago. In the present, the author of the anonymous book deploys treasures of mischief to ruin the existence of the journalist, who goes into a tailspin.
Disclaimer also blurs our perspectives about the good guys and the bad guys in this family tragedy. It’s excellent and visually stunning. And it doesn’t seem to have been designed with artificial intelligence software.
