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
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