Let me paint you a picture. You’re a simple man who enjoys the simple things in life. You enjoy watching your son play football on the weekends, singing along to Springsteen in the car and fighting for justice as a lawyer at your middle-class law firm. When suddenly, out-of-the-blue, a stranger comes up to you and exposes a secret with enough weight behind it that it could tear your family apart. That’s exactly what happened to Adam Price in The Stranger, based on the Harlan Coben thriller novel of the same name. Within this eight-part Netflix miniseries, the ideas of everybody having secrets and being careful what you put on social media are amplified and exaggerated when a stranger informs Adam that his wife Corinne faked her pregnancy and then her miscarriage to cover it up. The show follows numerous intertwining storylines that include Adam trying to find the Stranger as well as his missing wife, DC Johanna Griffin and her partner Wes investigating the horrifying decapitation of an alpaca that somehow relates to a naked boy who was found in the woods as well as a party in the woods that took place on the night of the alpaca murder which Adam’s oldest son and his friends attended. On one hand, with all the storylines being so complex and detailed, the show may seem too tangled to truly ever reach its full potential as a gripping thriller mystery. However, with strong lead performances from Stephen Rea and Jennifer Saunders and an undeniably intriguing premise, the Stranger is able to break stereotypes in the genre and become a great show with labyrinthine plotting and unexpected plot twists. Viewers who enjoyed Harlan Coben’s other works in television such as the British drama ‘Safe’ would definitely relish in the experience of binging The Stranger
