So, I just finished the show and before I rant I have to say that despite any plot holes or random red herrings, this show had me hooked, I watched it in a day and I loved how the story developed.

So to my rant, what was up with Corinne's reaction to Adam finding out about her fake pregnancy?? Why couldn't she just say "I found out about your affair and this was the only way I thought I could keep you". Her whole reaction and random monologue about Suzanne Hope made it seem as though there was something deeper going on, as if she had been initiated into a cult of women who pretended to be pregnant and she was too far in now. Like her whole mysterious act was so unnecessary, I spent the whole show cooking up random theories in my head about her and Dante or her and a cult or her and Adams father. Only to discover in the end that her death had nothing to do with the pregnancy and was about that stupid football club money. And then we never even heard what her explanation was about the fake pregnancy and how there's "more going on than we know" like.....what more??

There seem to be a lot of posts asking about the plot, so here's a summary of the key points and I can add to it if anything significant is missing (I'll avoid character names as there are so many of them it will be confusing):

• A lawyer - our hero - works on a case with a pretty young lawyer, and starts to develop feelings. His wife figures this out and so pretends to be pregnant - and then pretends to have a miscarriage - and his interests are refocused and their marriage is saved.

• The wife later discovers a colleague (their jolly neighbour) is stealing money from the football club. She confronts him but they are good friends so she allows him time to pay it off. He knows he cannot afford to, so starts to frame her by fixing the books and telling the coach that he thinks she did it, and that she intends to frame the coach. The coach thus hires a PI to look into the wife, to protect himself and perhaps find evidence of theft.

• The PI had been raised by a man with whom she became estranged after she discovered (as a young adult) he was not really her father. While investigating the wife for the coach, she figures out who her biological father really was and realises the hero is actually her half brother. She also uncovers the fake pregnancy through bank records, and so to protect her new-found brother she discloses her findings to the hero rather than the coach, both to protect him and because her "father's" lies have made her sensitive to this sort of family secret.

• The hero confronts his wife, who assumes it was her colleague - the jolly neighbour - who dug up the dirt in an attempt to destroy her. She doesn't take time to explain and instead rushes off to confront the jolly neighbour, who smashes her head in with a hammer, buries her in the woods and then fakes a text from her phone to the hero saying she needs some time. He calls the children "kids" rather than "boys" which later tips the hero off that it wasn't really her.

• He also tried to stage her suicide and parks her car by the airport (which we're led to think may have been used to transport the body, as the detective notes the boot is so very clean, but a car user reports you couldn't fit an adult body in that boot so this seems improbable; the detective never asked for forensics so that's speculation, and maybe the body was on the back seat as that's where an earring was found, but that's a conspicuous way to move a body).

• Meanwhile the PI - who does a separate line in blackmail - identifies that a local baker's daughter is a sex worker for wealthy businessmen. Rather than blackmail the wealthy businessmen, she blackmails the baker, who tells the daughter about all of this, and the daughter then warns her clients. One of these clients is a fraudster currently running a scam on the church and who can't therefore afford to be exposed so he hires a local corrupt cop to find the blackmailer and stop her. The corrupt cop's interrogation of the baker goes too far and he kills her, alas.

• The corrupt cop is highly stressed as he's estranged from his wife and his daughter has a long term mystery illness, for which he needs money to consult medical specialists. However, the daughter's friend - the hero's son - discovers that she is actually being poisoned by the mum who craves attention. This is largely irrelevant aside from justifying some action scenes in which the corrupt cop has become ever more angry and violent.

• The man who raised the PI had murdered his wife (the PI's mother) years ago when she attempted to leave him with her child, and he hid her body in the walls of their house. He's inexplicably careful to never refer to his daughter's gender in conversation and uses a gender neutral name for her (such that one generally assumes he means his son). When his daughter's real father wants to demolish the house as part of a redevelopment scheme he realises his wife's body will be revealed and so hires the lawyer to oppose the scheme. This is unsuccessful, he is arrested and ends up in prison. He tries to kill himself and ends up in a low security hospital. The PI visits - possibly either to make amends or kill him, it's not clear.

• Meanwhile, the hero's eldest son goes to a bonfire party and hijinks ensure: a boy called Dante tries to cop off with the son's sort-of girlfriend, but she plays a prank on him in which he ends up naked and unconscious by a lake. She also spikes the hero's best friend with PCP, who then goes off on a bad trip and ends up inexplicably decapitating an alpaca in the town centre. He uses a spade, and it's not clear if this was the spade used by the jolly neighbour to bury the mother or if this entire thing is unrelated.

• There is a human bite mark on the alpaca's leg with a very unique teeth pattern, but it never really transpires who did this (the son's PCP friend doesn't appear to have this teeth pattern and the detective investigating the case doesn't look into it, she's much more obsessed with her case relating to the baker as she was a dear friend).

• The sort-of-girlfriend's younger sister had naked photographs of her leaked online, so is very sad about that. The girl being poisoned by the mother leaked these online but blamed the son's best friend, which is why the sort-of-girlfriend spiked his spliff. None of this is important.

• A mysterious figure in the woods which led to people panicking (and Dante getting knocked out) was just the groundsman collecting wood, with a small axe. He has perfect recall but aside from providing one registration plate number this is never used in the plot. He was also caught fiddling with a security camera by Dante - who has a hard drive of videos of the hero's wife - but none of that is important.

• Ultimately the PI tells the hero who hired her, that leads him to the jolly neighbour, who leads him to the corpse in the hope of framing him for the murder himself. Instead, the hero blasts lead into the neighbour's tummy and kills him. The detective discovers this and - presumably due to her grave hatred of the corrupt cop, who killed her best friend the baker - immediately proposes to frame the corrupt cop for this killing too. This seems a poor decision - as even rudimentary forensic analysis would reveal the neighbour died after the cop was arrested - but six months later it seems all is in order (albeit the corrupt cop has not been sentenced yet).

Corrections and additions welcomed in the comments!

Just finished the show, and I agree it was a complete mess. The script is cringe worthy. Especially the line "The Stranger wanted to rid the world of secrets. Here we are keeping the biggest one of all". Fuck off, you literally just called her Chrissy a second ago. No need for the drama. Anyway, what I really wanted wanted to say is that Daisy is a piece of shit. Really truly the worst. What has gotten to me the most is that the last scene shows us she's still with Thomas, who has shown that he has a strong moral compass and compassion. Whereas Daisy is a psychopath. I'm hurt

Edit: Christ! She leaves Dante naked down at the lake, stealing his clothes. She then allows the police to investigate Mike. Mad shit.

I really enjoyed the show, it was a nice bit of entertainment and there were lots of interesting subplots to keep me hooked. It had quite a few good twists and turns and I thought the acting was pretty great including the kids. I don't think subplots necessarily have to amount to anything and surely there are red herrings in real life police investigations. A lot of you seem to be taking it really seriously. Everyone I know in real life who has seen it said they really enjoyed it, and perhaps there were a couple of questions raised and couple of anticlimaxes but, you know, how often is anything legitimately seamless? I am a big crime drama fan ,if you need to know my credentials. Maybe just enjoy the ride every once and a whIle guys...

As far as the ending :

Why couldn't DS Johanna just say she walked up to Tripp and Adam scuffling in the woods over Corinne's dead body, then she got a hold of the gun and shot Tripp 4 times in self defence?

Then everything (the gun, location, story) would be accounted for and it would be Adam and Johanna's secret?

How on earth is Katz supposed to take the blame shooting Tripp in the Goddamn woods?! THERE IS NO CONNECTION!

I’m only on episode six. So a seasoned police detective killed his wife. Wrapped her up and put her in the wall. Continue living in the house. Which never ever smelled of a decomposing body. Knew that there was a possibility that the developers would be able to take over his house but never packed up a damn thing. Never apparently even considered moving the body. And then somehow those developers were able to come and begin tearing down his home on a moments notice while he was still living in it and with all of his possessions still in it. Like that’s how it works, you’re sitting in your home drinking your coffee and a construction crew shows up and starts swinging a wrecking ball.

This show is not making a hell of a lot of sense.

Though my personal biggest gripe with the show is Katz's decision to shoot the baker. Not just when he kills her, but why shoot her at all?

Initially i thought he was merely pretending to be a cop, but we quickly learn that he actually is.

With this in mind, why not just show the baker his badge? And why try to strong arm / threaten to kill her for information when he could very easily have just convinced her to give him all of the materials The Stranger gave to her for the purposes of investigation.

You could justify that he was extremely stressed, but shooting an innocent business owner (in England, with an extremely high amount of CCTV in public spaces) could not have possibly been a clever move at all.

I can forgive the deliberately misleading plot points and red herrings of the show such as the rave, Corinne's car, the alpaca and so on, but this part makes the least sense to me.

Ps - Daisy, the love interest of one of Adam's sons, was quite an awful person to both spike Mike with little evidence as to the accusations laid against him, and was unnecessarily cruel when she took Dante's clothes and leaving him alone in the woods. Mike felt guilty thinking he had caused his injuries but daisy shows no remorse despite it being her fault

Maybe i missed a lot of details but i'm a bit stumped with all of this:

- Connie made it sounds like there was a reasoning behind the fake pregnancy.. there wasn't

- The guy that hired the corrupt cop to clean up his loose ends got away clean

- The mother feeding the daughter rat poison got away clean, and rat poison girl is still being fed rat poison?

- Rat poison girl gets away with posting child porn

- Daisy gets away with drugging someone

- Chubby special football club kid gets away with leaving someone almost for dead

- How did the corrupt cop get Connie's Tag thingy to plant as evidence in the cake shop? Why would he even use her as bait all while trying to say that he felt it was the husband

- Why would he even shoot the old lady in the cafe, he seems pretty calculated / not evil during the show and it seemed like he was just doing that for the money, it seemed very out of character (until when he found out his daughter was being poisoned)

- How did he know to go to the cafe in the first place since the daughter used an alias? (maybe he had friends that could dig up the alias?)

- I thought that Adam & and the ex cop were neighbors, in that case wouldn't have met the stranger / his sister when she was younger?

- Why did the ex cop who seemed pretty smart & connected not think to get rid of his wifes dead body from the wall, especially considering he knew there was a possible demo about to take place

- Why was Adam & Johanna openly discussing (not even whispering - and from memory people near by) the murder of the neighbor in such a public setting

All this kid does it literally ask questions as half of his dialog. And run away. And cry.

The main question that really bugs me is that why did Corinne have to say “there’s more to this” and relate that story about the pregnant lady and that she was upset when she didn’t show anymore when actually it was linked to Tripp and his deceit. Why did Katz have to kill Heidi? I mean, sure he was desperate to find out about the stranger who was trying to blackmail his employer or whatever he did to earn extra money to pay off his debts but literally he did not have to kill her at all ? Also, how could his daughter be so “sick” from just being rat poisoned all the time? how could the high end specialists not figure that out if he was working so hard to pay the bill? I’m sure they would have taken tests to find out about the poison? why would her mother even poison her own child. The thing with the Alpaca is so horrendous. Mike killed the Alpaca because his drink was spiked then how was Dante in hospital if he just fell off? also why did Daisy steal his clothes? Lastly in the end, Griffin helps out Adam to cover up the murder of both Corinne and Tripp and link it with Katz by just placing the gun in the crime scene but Katz was already arrested how could he have killed Tripp? 😐

I binged the entire series today so it’s still fresh in my mind. I loved the show, it was really well done, aside from the fact there are so many goddamn plot holes !!

• What did the alpaca have to do with anything? And Dante nearly dying? The party? I’m so confused because none of that storyline ended up being relevant to the actual ending. It was literally just shoved in there to add in extra twists and throw the audience off I guess

• Why did Griffin help Adam at the end and hide the gun at Chrissy’s place? Surely they could have just said that he killed Tripp out of self-defence. It would have been a more feasible and believable ending..

• Is Chrissy a ghost or some bs thing? How does she just keep disappearing when she was there a second ago. It doesn’t make sense.

Overall, 8/10, would recommend. But the plot holes .. The show really needed to be tied up better

Everything about her... Her face, her smug crooked smile, her stupid fucking baseball hat!

SPOILERS BELOW

Um, why didn’t they have Kimberly sit near the entrance when they were on that stakeout? She was like a mile away. If she was closer to the entrance, she could’ve pointed him out sooner or sumn. Ugh.

Also. Why didn’t Corinne just tell Adam about the money thing???? It wasn’t like a life or death situation (until Tripp killed her). Could’ve been like, ‘Hey, Tripp stole some money but I’m giving him time to make it right. Also, did Tripp tell you about the pregnancy thing?’

Jeeeeez.

Also, did anyone question why Tripp was out in the forest in the first place after that coverup? And the gun. The cop lady stored it in the bricks but like...nobody’s gonna question why the murder weapon wasn’t near Tripp? And how tf Katz would have had time to kill him after he held the ladies hostage and got arrested? Also WHY would Katz kill Tripp in the first place?

A lot of plot holes and dumb behavior, but I still enjoyed the show despite it lol. Even if the ending was a bit disappointing.

Why did Katz kill Heidi??

I still don't get this part. Why did he have to kill Heidi when she could have ultimately helped him find these women?

They both wanted to destroy the same secret!!

Why would that aging detective with the too-young-for-her-face hair want to get rid of that caring, good looking black guy? I was imagining a fat sweaty old man.

Side note the young detective said he had a ham sandwich for lunch but his fingers smell like fish (after his second date) 1. Wtf why include that and 2. I thought he was gay

An I right in thinking that the plotlines followed by the children are completely irrelevant and have no bearing on the central mystery?

The llama was just a PCP trip, Dante's accident was just a prank gone wrong, the leaked photos of the younger sister were unconnected to the main plot... I suppose the elder boy did help uncover that the corrupt cop's daugher was being poisoned ... but that wasn't really relevant either, side from explaining his mental state.

Even the role of the groundsman (who it seems was just out collecting wood with a small axe) on the night of the bonfire was irrelevant, despite him having perfect recall and attention to detail and working at the football club where the embezzlement took place...

I felt like this was one of the biggest disappointments I've ever had on Netflix and it's hilarious to see how few people are interested in talking about the show. I literally only come here to find community in other people who felt like it was a waste of their time. Doesn't seem like there are big fans like Westworld and game of thrones or even the outsider or the OA which are all communities I've been active in. Kind of restores my faith.

This show was horribly written with a ton of plot holes just like everyone else on here is saying but it was still entertaining nonetheless. Despite the plot holes, I enjoyed all the different storylines with each character even though they seemed to be tied together very sloppily. I’d say i’m 50/50 on watching more if they do another season.

Yes, there are tons of plot holes and odd connections. If you forget about that its still an entertaining who-dun-it. I was so flabbergasted with all of the connections, that I mapped them out. Very unlikely for one neighborhood to have 3 murders by 3 different people and two unrelated druggings. Here is my mapping:

Green lines are Exposed Secrets

Red lines are Murders

Orange lines are families

Purple lines are druggings

When Johanna was running from Adam & she puts her hat on like it makes her invisible... he's seen you wear the hat, you're more recognizable with that stupid hat on.

After all the havoc that she caused, I can't believe Adam would feel any kind of affection for the 'stranger' just because she was his half sister. And I wonder if he told his dad about her? This was one of the better Harlen Coben adaptations - better than Safe, not as good as The Five. It really could have done without all that dumb alpaca stuff IMO. Always a pleasure to watch Siobhan Finneran in anything though and the actor playing Katz (can't remember his name) was excellent. And I have to say I was not expecting that to be Corinne's fate!

This has to be one of the worst series I have ever watched. I hope Netflix doesn’t make a second season and that they remove this first season so others don’t waste 7 hours of their lives. Netflix should be embarrassed that they allowed the production of this train wreck. If I wasn’t quarantined for the next month, I’d be really pissed.

I get that Joanna and Adam apparently pin the death of Tripp on Katz. I will just ignore the random issue of them hiding the gun in Chris’s house rather than Katz’s as well as the timing issue but my main question is, if the bodies of Tripp and Corinne are found out in the middle of nowhere together, how will the apparent link between their deaths be explained? I assume it has to do with the football club but Tripp specifically mentioned that he cooked the football club books so well that no one would ever be able to unwind what happened.

My husband and I really enjoyed this show for the most part, despite all the random subplots and red herrings but we cannot make sense of this part of the ending!!!

The ”main” (bruh they focused on the red herrings so fucking hard it might as well been the main story, or at least fucking tie it to the main story somehow???) story would have turned out the way it did anyway?

I would have either wanted it to focus purely on this family and then a ”stranger” who randomly stalks them revealing secrets in the family to each other which creates drama and tension.

OR

Focus only on Corinne disappearance plot, but all red herrings would purely be used for establishing a motive for multiple charactees to have something to do with her disappearance (kinda like maybe the police and everyone else believes she disappeared, but the husband aka Adam and maybe the female cop dont really believe this main theory and investigates all these other red herrings) WITHOUT SOME USELESS ASS ”STRANGER”