Severance Fans Need To Watch Britt Lower's Harlan Coben Netflix Miniseries

Harlan Coben fans know precisely what to expect when they stream the latest small screen take on one of his novels. An entire banquet of implausible rug-pulls, mystifying misdirects, and more red herrings than you can shake a fishing pole at will follow on the way to a conclusion that will either leave you gasping or groaning, if not both. That's part of their appeal, and it's led to a lucrative working relationship between the mystery thriller novelist and various streamers over the last decade — primarily Netflix, which inked a deal with Coben in 2018 that continues to pay off in spades.

Not all Harlan Coben adaptations are made equal, but the best ones will keep you watching no matter how patently ridiculous the proceedings get. So it is with "I Will Find You," the new Netflix miniseries based on Coben's 2023 novel of the same name that's only just dropped. Created by Robert Hull (who, as a TV veteran who wrote for series like "Gotham," "Pennyworth," and the ambitious J.J. Abrams-produced "Alcatraz," knows how to serve up entertaining nonsense with a straight face), the show casts Sam Worthington as David Burroughs, a former Boston attorney and law professor who's now serving life in prison for murdering his son. If you're immediately skeptical of the idea of this chiseled, good-natured working man being a cold-blooded killer capable of filicide, you're already on the right track.

For certain folks, however, the show's biggest selling point is that it serves as Britt Lower's follow-up to her well-deserved Emmy victory for pulling double-duty as the polar opposites Helly R. and Helena Eagan in "Severance" Season 2. Thankfully, she has a plum role in "I Will Find You" as Rachel Mills, David's ex sister-in-law and essentially the catalyst for the ever-so-twisty plot.

What's this you say? David might not be a murderer? And Rachel, a once celebrated reporter, has gotten her hands on an incriminating photo that appears to show David's son alive and well, spurring him to try and uncover the truth after impulsively breaking out of prison by punching the guards and holding them at gunpoint? ("The Roofman," he is not.) "I Will Find You" doesn't wait long to begin untangling the conspiratorial web at the heart of its narrative, which draws in everyone from David and Rachel's friends and loved ones to characters like Clancy Brown's Nicky Fisher (a mobster who's sorta, but not really, out of the game) and Madeleine Stowe as Gertrude Payne, a dubious heiress who, at one point, gravely intones, "Don't ask questions that you don't want the answers to" (as you can see in the show's trailer).

Critics are, unsurprisingly, mixed on "I Will Find You," which has a 67 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. Regardless, many seem to agree with The Guardian's Sarah Dempster when she writes, "The script is made of Play-Doh and our protagonists are but flaps of luncheon meat pegged to a washing line. And yet still we must — must! — find out what happens." It also helps to have a performer as captivating as Britt Lower doing her part to keep our attention and putting her crusading journalist cap on as one of the leads. Sure enough, "I Will Find You" premiered at number one on Netflix in most parts of the world following its launch on Thursday, June 18, including the U.S. (per FlixPatrol). Dismiss the Harlan Coben formula all you want, but you can't deny it's effective.