Warning: spoilers for Missing You ahead.
It’s a new year and with that comes another new Harlan Coben thriller to binge through.
Whether you are dreading heading back to work on Monday or commiserating the fact you’re already in, it continues the yearly tradition started by Fool Me Once last year.
This year’s edition focuses on a Met detective, Kat Donovan, working in the missing persons department who comes across her ex-fiancé on a dating app.
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The typical Coben twist comes in the fact that he has been missing for several years after randomly disappearing one day.
Whereas the original book follows an NYPD detective, Harlan Coben’s newest show is instead set in the UK.
In an exclusive interview ahead of the release of the show, we spoke to some of the stars of Missing You.
When speaking about the changes made from the book, Sir Lenny Henry noted the amount of diversity on set.
He said: “It's intriguing. I read the book first, when I was asked to check it out to see if I wanted to be in it.
“I genuinely kept going Harlan Coben is crazy. This is crazy. It just came and was like ’BAM, flip, bam, reverse, bam, surprise, bam, cliffhanger’.
“I just thought this is going to be awesome. Then when I showed up on the set, it was very diverse. So there were black people and brown people and lots of women, and it was just a very diverse set.
“Having been in the business a long time when I did [AppleTV+ show] Three Little Birds, [it was diverse] because I was a producer.
“[Co-producers] Quay Streets have done a thing here to put marginalized people at the center of a story, to bring them into the center space and go ‘take the pointy end’.
“To have it be like this, and to have it succeed and be it's just a wonderful thing to be part of.”
Harlan Coben veteran Richard Armitage spoke about another element changed from the books, as his character in the books had sexual tension with the main character, DI Donovan.
In the show, his character Ellis Stagger takes on more of a father figure to Kat.
He said of this change: “One of the things that Harlan kind of hints in the book, which we decided to re-calibrate for the series, was this sort of one way sexual attraction that Stagger might have Kat.
“We just sort of redirected that into his love for her as a paternal love, because the loss of her father is so massive, and he saw her go through that that he's, you know, even though he's her boss, it's a professional relationship.
“He's sort of taking on the mantle of the, you know, paternal energy, yeah? Because I think it just makes it more interesting knowing what she's going to uncover.
“It just gives you a really kind of interesting tension.”
Top Boy star Ashley Walters appears as Kat’s missing fiancé Josh. When asked about the changes made due to the location changing, he said: “I think things are changing. So I don't know how dissimilar we are from the States anymore, because we share so much content, we get to live with what they're doing, and they get to live with what we're doing.
“I think the internet is a prime example like, before [in the US], they wouldn't really understand any other show other than, like, a period drama or whatever.
“But due to the internet, due to music translating and stuff, they were able to welcome things like Top Boy and stuff like that.
“I think production is where it's it changes. Because I think we're naturally just more reserved over here.
“So I think, and when you read the book, it's like, it's very sensational, it's huge, it's over the top. I think even Josh is a bit like, suave and you know, that sort of guy.
“We just don't really have characters like that. We probably do, but like, you don't see them, we'll get embarrassed.
“So I think in that sense, everything's kind of slightly been brought down to kind of accommodate us.”
Missing You is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, Richard Armitage, TV, TV and Film
Michael Slavin