Safe, is a TV show written by Harlen Coben as an original Netflix-Canal 8 joint venture. We had hesitated watching this as we had watched the first product of this joint venture, The Five, and found it to be more than a bit dreary. In fact, we watched two episodes of The Five, and then jumped to episode 10 and it felt like we had not missed a thing. The only reason we watched the next effort from the same venture was a recommendation from favorite daughter describing , Safe, as ” our cup of tea” so last night we watched our first episode.

It would appear from the first episode of Safe, that the joint venture team learned quite a bit from their first effort. We found ourselves drawn into the story and interested to see what happens in the next episode. As with all first episodes of a mini series a fair bit of time is spent introducing the characters ( and there are many)  and their relationships to each other. The theme is simple a widowed man’s teenage daughter goes missing and he is trying to find her. His love interest,  a married woman from across the way in an  very upgraded english, gated community, is a local police detective who presumably will help in the search. Pretty typical Coben stuff accept for the Settin in England rather than New Jersey.

I do not intend to give a blow by blow of each episode but will give a final review and rating when we get to the end or have enough and skip to the end. The main failure of  The Five,  was its floundering about in endless flashbacks and deterioration, ultimately, into being no better than a soap opera.  So far ,Safe, is much crisper appears to be more expertly directed and the story line appears much more likely to develop into a good mystery.

Based on the first episode I would rate it three out of five but with  the promise to improve in later episodes.

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