Harlan Coben and ‘Missing You’ Cast Talk ‘Emotional Ending’ of Latest Netflix Adaptation: ‘When I Watched Episode 5, I Actually Cried’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman Harlan Coben is the master of twisty-turny page-turners and, increasingly, TV shows. The prolific crime author has had a number of his thrillers adapted for screen and the latest, “Missing You,” is set to get Netflix viewers talking once again following the success of his last adaptation for the streamer, “Fool Me Once,” which was one of the streamer’s most popular shows of 2024.

For Coben, showrunner Victoria Asare-Archer and the cast, the challenge was to balance those nail-biting cliff-hangers with character development and relationships that viewers could relate to. “We wanted to keep the twists and turns and the suspense,” Coben said during a press launch for the series in November. “But I think, as [producer] Nicola Shindler mentioned, this is also a love story.

Really, the story between Kat and Josh is at the center here.” The Kat in question is Detective Inspector Kat Donovan, played by “Slow Horses” star Rosalind Eleazar.

Still picking up the pieces after the death of her father (played by Lenny Henry) and breakdown of her engagement to Josh (Ashley Walters), she finds herself unravelling a mystery that could give her the answers she’s long been searching for. “It’s got all the trademark Harlan stuff that people love,” said Henry. “Those intriguing details, those relationships and those hooks.” But what elevates it from a typical procedural, in Henry’s eyes, is the focus on the relationships between Kat and her friends, family and colleagues, including her boss Ellis Stagger (Richard Armitage, marking his fourth Coben adaptation). “I think what’s happened these days is we’ve allowed family and relationships to permeate these things,” said Henry. “It’s the humanness of drama that make us want to.