Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Safe’ On Netflix, Where Michael C. Hall Looks For His Missing Daughter

Miss seeing Michael C. Hall on your TV? Want him to play another endearing weirdo like he did in Six Feet Under and Dexter? Then you might want to stream Safe… if you don’t mind hearing Hall attempt a British accent. Can this original work from Harlan Coben stand with Hall’s other great roles?

SAFE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A small group stands at a burial site. A man, who is obviously a grieving father, takes his younger daughter’s hand, then goes to hold his older daughter’s hand, who swats it away. “Sorry,” he says. “Yeah, right,” she replies. The plaque on the casket says “Rachel Delaney” with a date of death of “20 March 2017”.

The Gist: A year later, Tom Delaney (Michael C. Hall), a surgeon who lives in a suburban gated community in England, is still trying to put the pieces together after his wife’s death. So are his daughters Jenny (Amy James-Kelly) and Carrie (Isabelle Allen). At a community barbecue, we find out quite a bit: Jenny is still resentful of her father’s response to her mother’s illness and death, and Tom is secretly snogging with one of their neighbors, Sophie Mason (Amanda Abbington), who we later find out is a police detective in the suburban town.

Jenny, who’s 16, texts her boyfriend, a 19-year-old Chris Chahal (Freddie Thorp) the message “Tonight-Heaven”, right as he finds out that his parents will be getting divorced soon. That night, in the usual teenage way, Jenny tells her dad that she’s “going out with friends” when she’s meeting Chris at a house party thrown by Sia Marshall (Amy-Leigh Hickman) a classmate whose parents aren’t home. Lots of beer pong, pills, and kids getting wasted. The next morning, Tom wakes up from a vision of seeing his wife and finds out Jenny never came home.

As he goes around the neighborhood to various parents of kids she knows. The girl who threw the party lies to his face so she doesn’t incur the wrath of her parents. But another kid, Ioan (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), who Chris used for an alibi, gives Tom enough information to go on (though at one point, Tom has to chase him through the streets of their downtown in order to get that info). It’s a Facebook video where Jenny is seen in the background getting in the car of Tom’s colleague and friend Pete Mayfield (Marc Warren).

He tries to call Sophie to see what she can find out, but she’s busy with her new partner, Emma Castle (Hannah Arterton) investigating a claim that a local high school teacher had an inappropriate relationship with a student. That teacher? Zoé Chahal (Audrey Fluerot), Chris’ mother.

Someone’s hiding something, as we see in flashes of someone sinking in a pool, the girl who had the party looking at her pool with horror based on what happened the night before. We also see the girl’s dad, horrified at what he discovers in his garage freezer. More on that in a second.

Our Take: It’s interesting that this is the vehicle Hall decided to use for his post-Dexter series comeback. It’s an original work by mystery novelist Harlan Coben (both Coben and Hall are executive producers of the production, a joint venture between Netflix and French studio Canal+). In a lot of ways, it’s a standard Peak TV potboiler, with a man who has his own troubles unearthing the dark underbelly of his seemingly serene, boring gated community. But the presence of Hall would indicate that there should be more; Hall is usually attracted to unusual premises and difficult-to-root-for characters. But from everything we’ve seen from the first episode, that’s not what we’re going to see.

Sure, there’s something about Tom Delaney’s marriage that’s going to be explored; he’s haunted by not being there when his sick wife suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jenny is still pissed off at him. We also know some bad things are going on in the family lives of the Chalals and the Marshalls, and that Sophie’s family life isn’t great, either (her ex lives in an RV in her driveway and likes to get shitfaced instead of parenting).

But for the most part, Safe feels, well, safe. We know that Jenny is either dead or off the grid somewhere, either by her own volition or under duress. We’re not sure we care enough at this point, though, to watch the remaining 7 episodes.

Sex and Skin: We see Zoé’s bum in pictures found on a thumb drive that was placed in her locker at school. She’s not sure how that thumb drive got there, and who is trying to accuse her of an inappropriate relationship.

Parting Shot: That body in the Marshalls’ freezer? It looks like Chris, which opens up a whole can of worms.

Sleeper Star: We’ve liked Abbington since she was the best part of Sherlock‘s most recent dodgy seasons, and we like her here as Sophie.

Most Pilot-y Line: Speaking of Sherlock, Hall’s British accent is very Cumberbatchian, only not all that good. Why is it that Brits can do American accents but not the other way around?

Our Call: SKIP IT, unless you’re a Hall or Coben completist. It just feels like the twists aren’t going to be nearly as twisty as Coben thinks they’re going to be.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Safe on Netflix