My Wife and I have been on a Richard Armitage binge recently.
It started out by watching Red Eye, This was ITV's recent drama, involving Spies, China an overnight Flight between the UK and China (I assume this is the Red Eye, and that's not some play on China/Communism/Reds) It was alight, full of twists on twists on twists. However, it was lacking in several areas, with unexplained holes, and things left open. It felt a bit twsity for twisty sake.
Next up was "The Stranger" which had been at the back of my mind to watch for some time (My gamer name often is/was The Stranger), and when we saw that Richard Armitage was in it, and we had just watched him in Red Eye, we decided to jump in. This is (one of many) an adaptation of Harlan Coben book of the same name for Netflix. In this one "A stranger turns up and starts telling people secrets about family members, this leads to accusations, secret phone calls and stand offs,
As well as the adults doing their thing, and the Police getting involved, there are also teenagers doing teenage things and trying to scooby do it too (in a good way) I think this was our favourite of the 4 series that we watched, yes it was very twisty, but it was well acted, we were interested in all the story lines (and how they eventually linked together). If you're only going to watch one series with Richard Armitage in from the last 5/6 years watch this one!
As we enjoyed The Stranger so much, we decided to look at some of Harlan's other stuff, we looked at "Safe" but could not past Michael C Hall's awful British accent, so skipped it and instead watched "Stay Close" Another Drama were there is a family with Secrets (although this time it's the Matriarchy with the secret, she's about to get Married, and some stuff from her past is about to catch up with her. Not quite as good as The Stranger, and this is mostly because Richard Armitage's character wasn't very believable (and the flashback scenes with him in don't really look any different to the modern scenes) However, "Ken and Barbie" were really enjoyable.
Next up was "Fool me Once" We didn't realise Richard was in this one, until we started watching, Michelle Keegan is the lead, and she is in the unfortunate position of having her Sister and Husband be murdered within months of each other (and also being sacked from the Armed Forces for unlawfully killing civilians - which I would have thought would see her in Jail but apparently not) This one was harder to get in, only really getting interesting in the final 3/4 episodes. We found it harder to be interested in the b and c plots, and the teenage side plots this time were pretty meh and not really worth it. We watched to the end purely to see how it resolved, but we more glad that it was over than enjoying the ride. Now maybe we gave ourselves Coben Fatigue or Richard Armitage fatigue (although he's in this far less) but I don't think so. Avoid, unless you like Coben, or Keegan very much and want to watch everything they've done.
These may not be the most informational reviews ever, but hey ho, they are what they are.
_________________ Where's the Kaboom? I was expecting an Earth shattering Kaboom!
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