By admin 
I miss you
Every breath you take
Season 1
Episode 1
Editorial review
Photo: Vishal Sharma/Netflix
If there’s one thing Netflix really nails, it’s a fast-paced, buzzy, exciting series. Something short and sweet – maybe from another country – that everyone can enjoy in a day or two, tell their friends to watch because it blows their mind, and then forget about it two weeks later. Think Baby reindeer, Squid gameor even Money theftall of which blew up relatively out of nowhere and have had ripples on the streamer ever since.
That’s what happened with Fool me for oncealso, which brightened the service when it fell last New Year’s Day. It’s anyone’s guess why the Harlan Coben adaptation was so popular, with critics and audiences alike liked it overall meh – but it did so well for the service that Netflix immediately greenlit two other Coben adaptations, including this year’s New Year’s Eve drop, I miss you.
An adaptation of a novel originally set in New York, I miss you tells the story of Manchester Detective Inspector Kat Donovan, charmingly played by Slow horsesRosalind Eleazar. Not only does Kat specialize in missing persons cases, but she was also part of it when her almost-too-handsome fiancé, Josh (Ashley Walters), left her ten years earlier, shortly after the murder of her police officer father. It was a pretty bad move, and apparently it cut Kat off from all love afterward, but as we learn pretty quickly I miss you‘s first episode it might have been a bit nefarious too.
The pieces start to click into place when Kat matches with Josh on a dating app called Melody Cupid, which matches you with people based on the music you like. (Why Josh is back in town, on the app, after such a dick move is anyone’s guess.) Kat swipes up to him, they connect, and she reaches out, looking for some kind of closure. He blows her off and says he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for them to talk.
Around the same time, Kat discovers that the evil Monte LeBurne, the hitman who killed her father, has a type of fast-acting cancer that gives him only days to live. She foolishly enlists her best private investigator to get her to the prison where LeBurne is being held, all to get some sort of answer. Monte doesn’t want to see her, or anyone else for that matter, but the creepy nurse in red lipstick who tends to him lets Kat in anyway, because apparently, when you die in prison, ethics go out the window.
That’s only amplified when, after Monte picks himself up and enjoys making Kat cry, his creepy nurse injects him with some kind of morphine-based truth serum, saying he’ll be singing like a bird in minutes. It works and Monte, believing Kat to be his sister, tells her that he wasn’t paid to kill her father, but to take the blame. He was already locked up for two other murders, so what’s a third? Kat is shocked, but anyone with half a brain could have told you that Monte would somehow be bad for this murder. It is episode one after all. There is more story to tell.
Meanwhile, Kat’s private detective friend calls her (?) from the prison parking lot to tell her that she has requested the records of everyone who has ever visited Monte. (Gasp!) Apparently Josh was there the day before he got up and dumped Kat and the town, which cast even more criticism on his character.
All this personal drama for Kat isn’t happening in a bubble, though. She also has a day job drama, involving a new young technical colleague and a missing man named Rishi, who we see quite battered and wandering aimlessly through the fields while not thinking about some dream girl standing hazily against soft light.
I’m skeptical that this girl ever existed; As we see, towards the end of episode one, Rishi is captured and tied up by a guy in a tractor, and when Kat and her partners search the cottage Rishi had rented, they find unopened champagne and wrapped lingerie, as well as a claim that although he had booked the cottage for two people, he showed up alone. I bet the evil cattle prod catfished Rishi with the promise of this blurry babe, although I’m not sure for what purpose or where and/if it’s related to what’s going on with Kat, Josh and her dead father . Fortunately, there has been since the next episode of it I miss you is already on Netflix, waiting for you to reluctantly say, “Oh, good, another one,” even though it’s way too late at night. None of us have to wait long to find out.
• I would bet a lot of money on the decision to shoot I miss you in the UK instead of New York, was made for budgetary or logistical reasons, but I love it. There’s something about watching relatively unknown (to us) dramatic actors pottering around cute terraced houses, al fresco dining areas and large empty farms that I just can’t get enough of. Somehow it’s more prestigious, and I can’t explain why, but it’s a fact.
• There was something about the lingering shots of Kat’s friends at the end of the episode (particularly Mary Malone’s Aqua) that made me think they knew more than what they were showing. Richard Armitage’s Stagger, Kat’s boss, also certainly knows something. You will never convince me otherwise.
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Catch up on all the drama from your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Statement