I've never read a Harlan Coben novel, but I've now watched two or three TV adaptations of his and think I'm getting used to his style. The action starts off with a death, on this occasion, the drowning of an attitudinal schoolboy at a late night party being held at the swankiest house with its own pool in a small gated community of the spoilt daughter of her shady dad and docile mum. Then dial in about a bazillion potential suspects, cross reference with another bazillion sub-plots, stir, throwing in another murder and finish it off with a highly unlikely twist you couldn't have predicted if it was coming straight at you and had "Big twist coming" tattooed on its forehead.
You want sub-plots, I'll give you subplots. A teenage girl, the girlfriend of the dead boy goes missing. Her dad, a local surgeon nurtures feelings of guilt because he was starting an affair with a neighbour while his terminally ill wife was breathing her last. Said neighbour just happens to be the lead detective on the murder trail. She's being assisted by a zealous young female cop who is both pregnant and a "widow", her cop boyfriend having been killed in the line of duty. She's transferred back to this small town to hook up with her dad who abandoned her at birth but who's since come out as gay and is the best pal of the doctor above. Not forgetting that the dead boy's mother is being blackmailed for having sex with one of her underage pupils.
What it all really boils down to of course in true Coben style is a dark secret in the distant past which comes to light in the present day disrupting the lives of most of the folk we've encountered in the town. Told over eight 45-minute episodes, the story went up down and around the town before all was revealed in the final episode.
Naturally, it was all totally unbelievable but somehow it managed to follow its crazy quilt narrative all the way to its frankly incredible final revelation at the very end.
This ITV mini-series was plain silly most of the time and wasn't helped either by some distinctly soap-opera quality acting but it somehow got where it might have been going. Efficiently made and engaging enough, with the occasional good performance, or snappy line of dialogue or camera-shot, this was like a cake with just too many ingredients and in the end, proved a bit too much to digest.
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You want sub-plots, I'll give you subplots. A teenage girl, the girlfriend of the dead boy goes missing. Her dad, a local surgeon nurtures feelings of guilt because he was starting an affair with a neighbour while his terminally ill wife was breathing her last. Said neighbour just happens to be the lead detective on the murder trail. She's being assisted by a zealous young female cop who is both pregnant and a "widow", her cop boyfriend having been killed in the line of duty. She's transferred back to this small town to hook up with her dad who abandoned her at birth but who's since come out as gay and is the best pal of the doctor above. Not forgetting that the dead boy's mother is being blackmailed for having sex with one of her underage pupils.
What it all really boils down to of course in true Coben style is a dark secret in the distant past which comes to light in the present day disrupting the lives of most of the folk we've encountered in the town. Told over eight 45-minute episodes, the story went up down and around the town before all was revealed in the final episode.
Naturally, it was all totally unbelievable but somehow it managed to follow its crazy quilt narrative all the way to its frankly incredible final revelation at the very end.
This ITV mini-series was plain silly most of the time and wasn't helped either by some distinctly soap-opera quality acting but it somehow got where it might have been going. Efficiently made and engaging enough, with the occasional good performance, or snappy line of dialogue or camera-shot, this was like a cake with just too many ingredients and in the end, proved a bit too much to digest.
.