There’s something very satisfying about a tight, five- or six-episode British crime drama. Every episode is just compelling and action packed enough, and because police in the U.K. don’t carry guns, every episode doesn’t just end in a ridiculous shoot-out. It feels like deeply personal shit, and because half the actors are always incredibly talented but also that person you saw in that one thing that one time, you can really lose yourself in the performances.
So while Harlen Coben didn’t intend for Missing You to be this sedate British crime drama when he wrote the novel, with Kat Donovan acting as a tough NYC detective, this Netflix adaptation has managed to make the novel into something more. It’s become a meditation on British racial drama, what it means to be queer and of a different generation, or even what life is like inside a smallish metropolitan police department. As a book, Missing You was pretty good. As a series, Missing You is even better.
That’s not to say that there weren’t parts that weren’t perfect. I still don’t know why Titus did anything that he did, nor why any of those creep henchmen were enlisted or how they managed to stay around. Where did all the money go? Why didn’t Debra just call the cops instead of trying Brendan back over and over after he was taken? And what happened to the dogs? Won’t someone think of the dogs?!?!
Still, it was pretty cool watching suburban mom Debra take an axe to the dipshits who wronged her and threatened her son. (You just don’t get that kind of stuff when guns are everywhere.) Even watching Titus fumble with shotgun shells while trying to juggle threats from both Kat and Debra was compelling. I don’t buy that Titus & Co. would just burn the whole thing down, including the hostages alive, when they could just kill them and then burn it down, but can you even have a crime drama without some sort of harebrained over-explanation that leads to the bad guy’s downfall? Titus just played with his food a little too long and that’s why he got got, as it were.
But while all the Titus stuff was compelling and satisfying (save for why it seems to take paramedics literal hours to transport Brendan, who’s been shot in the leg, to the hospital), the finale’s other twists and turns are what made it even more interesting. For instance, we find out via Calligan that Parker lives in a sort of council flat, and when Kat goes there — boom! — Parker’s a guy. Not only that, but he’s a guy who instantly recognizes Kat, clearly lived with Clint, and would give anything to have just one more second with him. They were together for 14 years, and while it’s clear their relationship wasn’t perfect by any means, with lots of secrets and hiding and denial, it was theirs, and that was enough. Kat lost her father, but as it turns out, she never really knew all of him. Parker, on the other hand, seems to have known everything about Clint, and so when he was killed, Parker really lost the love of his life.
And Clint’s death was complicated even more once we learn that both Josh and Aqua were involved. Aqua because she saw Clint and Parker together and basically threatened to out them to Kat, and Josh because he walked in on Clint beating the shit out of Aqua, too afraid that he’ll lose everything to really think of what’s at stake. It’s a horrible, cruel situation and you really do feel horrible for both Clint and Aqua, but when push came to shove, Clint was the one who couldn’t deal with his shit, who took things too far, and who was holding the knife that Josh ended up accidentally turning back on him. It’s absurd that Stagger would take Clint’s dying utterance about protecting Kat to extremes, making some other guy take the fall and lying to her for over a decade, but I guess cop bonds run deep. I still don’t buy that Stagger’s not on Calligan’s payroll, but I guess we’ll never know.
When the episode ends, it’s with Kat finding out about Josh, who lays out what went down. Kat’s shook, understandably, not only because Josh killed her damn dad but because he’s been lying to her for that whole week despite saying she could ask him anything. (I guess she never asked if Josh knew who killed her dad …) In the end, Kat seems to come to terms with what Josh did, realizing that her dad was not only deeply flawed but is also very dead, while her relationship with Josh — and, indeed, even what could be going forward — is still very much alive. She chooses possibility and optimism over vengeance and hate, and while it’s all deeply fucked up, getting back together with the guy who disappeared on you 11 years earlier after killing your dad and then lying to you about it, it still seems like the right thing to do.
Missing Notes
• This isn’t a slight on Ashley Walters, who plays Josh, but I somehow thought he’d be taller based on the headshots and upper torso photos we saw of Josh. He reads five-eleven or six-one when, in reality, it seems like he’s five-eight.
• There was a second when you see Clint giving Stagger that dog where I thought the whole show was going to turn into some weird Revenge Thing about Clint not taking proper care of the dog he bought from Titus, but alas, that’s not where it went.
