«Intimidation»: Harlan Coben's «The Stranger» arrives on Netflix

Saturday Netflix & chill - Lauriane Pipoz

Harlan Coben, the American master of detective fiction, begins his collaboration with Netflix with Intimidation. Based on one of its bestsellers, This mini-series, available for a month now, is already in the top 5 most watched on the platform. The reasons? Perfectly crafted plots. Absolute mastery of suspense. Independence from the novel, convincing fervent readers and the uninitiated alike. More humor british than its author. But this cocktail lacks that little something extra that would make your head spin.

Intimidation, is proof that old recipes still work. The mini-series opens with the story of an obviously fulfilled dad. Adam Price (Richard Armitage - the adaptation of The Stranger  is worth a look) has a good job, lives in the suburbs with his beautiful wife and goes to see his adorable boys play soccer on Sundays. But his well-ordered life takes a turn for the worse when he meets a stranger. She delivers a puzzling announcement: his wife Corinne (Dervla Kirwan) is not who she claims to be. Then she disappears.

An interesting base

That's only part of the story: the town of Price has been rocked by numerous irregularities. Starting with the strange discoveries of a decapitated alpaca and an unconscious teenager in Adam's outfit in the forest. Naturally, we're going to have to investigate. And inevitably, we're going to have to get some corpses out of the closet (literally or figuratively). This (very) good recipe is all about pretense: among these clean-cut, unconnected people, few are as white as snow.

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The package is well put together. So far, nothing surprising: this series is a collaboration between Coben, one of the great specialists in psychological thrillers, and Danny Brocklehurst, an established screenwriter. The storylines will be unravelled in the spectacular denouement of the final episode. A fall so incredible that it will certainly surprise even those readers of the American author who reproach him for recycling the same surprises.

Visit british touch

But if the viewer gets through the revelations of the eight episodes, it's certainly also thanks to a hint of levity that punctuates the series. The teens' humor, let's face it, is a guilty pleasure: puerile but hilarious, it's brought to life by the fresh hand of Charlotte, the author's daughter. Twenty-five years old, she makes the young people's exchanges very believable. On the other hand, we could do without the heavy-handed jokes about a stereotypical gay investigator: he wasn't in the book. It was certainly all right that way.

But back to the welcome changes between the book and the series. First of all, an extremely surprising twist: this is not the kind of series where you expect to discover a second LGBT character (we won't mention which letter it is, so as not to spoil the suspense). And it's integrated in a much more refined and natural way than the first. Secondly, the anchoring of’Intimidation in a small English town: the gloomy weather and heavy atmosphere grab you almost as if you were in a closed-door setting. Timed by the key british of the mature, deadpan investigator who's never without her tea. A timeless classic.

But nothing more

The plot is superb and the humor is spot-on. Yes, but what does this series offer that classics like Broadchurch or Top of the Lake? Well, not much. If we have fun noting the criteria that recur in every adaptation of a detective story into a mini-series, Intimidation ticks all the boxes. Except that this grid has already been recycled many times over the course of the 2010s. Harlan Coben, very active on social networks as a good writer of our time, examined the reactions of his audience before rejoicing: «So far no one's really found a hole in the plot!»Of course. But it's not enough. At this level, The Woods, to be adapted by Netflix Poland in 2020, will he come out of the woodwork?

Write to the author: lauriane.pipoz@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Netflix