The Stranger (2020)

Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/ENXU2vvzKHQ

_A stranger approaches Adam Price with a disturbing allegation about his wife, Corinne. Meanwhile detectives Johanna and Wes take on a bizarre case._

_The Stranger_ is an eight part Netflix series that promises mystery, suspense, and a twisting turning tale. So does it deliver on these promises?

Not really.

It certainly has promise, but is let down by bland lead characters, plot lines that literally go nowhere, and acting that would be very much at home in a daytime soap. It was not unlike a very long episode of _Eastenders_ in parts.

It takes too long to start explaining things, and by episode 6 we were starting to want to have some info instead of more and more being added to still as yet unexplained storylines. This all leads up to a rushed final episode that did not stick the landing. It was very anticlimactic, and so many threads and things that took up a lot of the run time in the end remained unresolved and had nothing to do with the conclusion.

And I am not even exaggerating when I say they had nothing to do with the ending. You could literally fast forward every scene with the teens and it will have no effect on the end product, it’s unnecessary and unconnected to everything, despite being set up as looking like a main storyline. It was far from it, you could have deleted their parts and made the run time much shorter.

Not even fantastic actors like Siobhan Finnerhan and that guy from _The Crying Game_ can lift this, because everyone around them is empty and unconvincing in their roles, and they are wrapped up in a story where the things that happen are wayyyy over the top and unjustified in comparison to the event that triggered everything.

We were left scratching our heads.

It’s an okay series, but is not much more than a background filler show while you wait for more episodes of _Ozark_ to be made.