The Harlan Coben Channel...I mean Netflix. 8 tv series with unraveling families, secrets, lies, butts, and cocks

 

You may have noticed that Netflix has turned into an all-Harlen Coben channel.  I had never heard of him before tv series based on his novels started pushing out all other content, but probably with good reason.  The tv series all have identical plots: a dead loved one, a funeral, someone who vanishes, a amily man or woman's "perfect life" starts to unravel due to the dark secrets that they or a loved one are hiding; and LGBT people do not exist.  But some of the family men are hunky, so...

1. Michael C. Hall in Safe: A close-up of family man Mikey's wedding ring as he stands at his wife's funeral with his three daughters, one of whom refuses to hold his hand. A year later, he rushes into surgery, then returns to his secure neighborhood to a community barbecue, with nuclear familys playing paddleball and eating burgers.  

His teenage daughter still hates him, but not to worry, she'll soon go missing, and her boyfriend will be dead, and there will be secrets and lies. 

2. Kai Alexander in  The Stranger.  While teens frolick at a bonfire, a young man runs naked through the woods, being chased by something. Sounds paranormal, but it isn't; he was just flirting with somebody else's girlfriend. 

Twelve hours earlier, nuclear family dad Richard Armitage drops one of sons off at some sort of practice and takes the other to a Dads vs. Lads soccer game. Soon his perfect life will unravel as The Stranger reveals some secrets and lies.

Teenage son Jacob Dudman, top photo, is also keeping some secrets and lies.

3. Hubert Milkowski in The Woods: A Polish production. A bearded man has a gun pointed at him.  He flashes back to the summer of 1994, in the woods outside a summer camp, where the police are loading a body while  gazes fearfully from his hiding place  

 Cut to the day before, when the campers, 90% girls with big breasts, are frolicking -- dancing aimlessly, blowing on whirligigs, raising their hands.  Why do people frolick so much in these tv shows?  I've never seen anyone do it in real life.  We do get a chest shot of the boy as he emerges from the water to flirt with a girl. 

 He grow up to be attorney Grzegorz Damiecki, whose perfect life with wife and teenage daughter begins to unravel. 

4. Draegon Hennessey in Hold Tight: A sequel to The Woods.  A depressed woman watches a video of her or someone else frolicking with a baby, then a middle aged man frolicking with a toddler.

Next up, Adam's fifth birthday, with lots of slobbery kisses, and teenage Adam arm-wrestling.. 

Deespondent, she trudges to his room -- hey, he's not dead, just alseep! Why has she spent the last five minutes of air time mourning him?  She steals his cell phone to snoop at his messages.

Their perfect lives seem rather unraveled already, with a looney Mom mourning a living son, but the plot is about Adam's best friend vanishing, with secrets and lies. Sorry, they're both identified as straight immediately 

More after the break

5. Mario Casas in The Innocent: Mario, who has a black eye, getting a haircut, flashes back to a nightclub full of big-breasted women. He flirts with one, then tells his friend he's leaving because of a big race tomorrow, but she convinces him to stick around, which makes her brother angry. 

Everyone steps outside to fight, and Mario shoves a guy into the pavement, killing him.  He goes to prison for four years for "negligent homicide."  When he gets out, he starts a "perfect life" with wife and kids, which starts to unravel. 

6. Finnegan Oldfield in  Gone for Good:   A mother and daughter in formal outfits are frolicking in the back yard of their palatial house, while husband/father Finn looks on dejectedly.  He flashes back to kissing her for about three minutes, and is interrupted by an older guys saying "He's out!  I can't stand him any more!" in spite of Mom liking him, and is Finn really giving up music for business school?  

Next up: he looks out at the wife/daughter in the back yard -- hmm, I thought they were dead -- and asks if Finn is still in love with her?  Wait, I thought he was married to her.  And why is she in a formal gown when no one else is?

Late that Finn hears a woman screaming and runs outside to see the older guy shot and killed, and Sonia floating in the swimming pool, dead. His daughter, if she is his daughter, is watching.  His perfect life begins at Minute 6, when he meets a new girl, and the secrets and lies emerge.

7. Jack Shalloo or Connor Calland in Stay Close: A British production. Grinning idiotically, a young man makes his way through a Mardi Gras that is not only gay-free, it's man-free, gawking at the breasts, going to a strip show to gawk at more breasts, then chasing someone into the woods to vanish. 

8. James Nesbitt. Cut to a nuclear family mom coming in with groceries to gush over her perfect husband and three kids. Her perfect life will start to unravel as secrets and lies about the missing boy emerge.  James Nesbitt and Richard Armitage get top billing.

9. Richard Armitage in  Fool Me Once: A British production.  In 1996, at a ritzy private school, some guys grab the new kid, tie him up, and frolick around a bonfire, but he has some sort of seizure and probably dies.  

Cut to the present, a funeral at a palatial mansion, where the widow thinks about meeting and kissing her husband, Richard Armitage.  Then she  looks at her two kids, and greets the funeral guests, all of whom  sputter about why she invited this other person that has no right to be here. 

 Her perfect life seems unraveled already, but the secrets and lies are just starting. For one thing, hubbie is not dead.  But you already guessed that, didn't you?

There are 13 more Harlen Coben novels optioned but not filmed yet.  Coming up in 2025:

10. Rudi Dharmalingam in Missing You: A detective's perfect life starts to unravel when her fiance goes missing but shows up on a dating app, and it's all connected to her father's murder. Starring Richard Armitage and James Nesbitt again, but Rudi gets second billing