All drama is manipulative. Everything, from who we cheer for and who we boo, to where the story takes us, is the result of the creator's construction of the dramatic machinery. Nothing new at all in this, of course: It's how any storytelling works.
Harlan Coben is a pretty good engineer. He knows the tropes we fall for. He knows what kind of situations will garner our empathy, our anger, and our thirst to learn more.
He's also American, and despite the British setting and characters, The Five is really an American series. The accents may be different, but the buttons he pushes were all installed in the U.S. There is no reason this show had to be set where it is: It could be set anywhere in American suburbia, Coben's usual haunt, without changing a damned thing.
MAJOR SPOILERS
The Five relies on some of the most incredible coincidences you will see. And it asks us to accept things that are simply beyond the pale. As for coincidences, we are asked to accept that a young boy, abducted and raised by someone from his neighborhood, just happens to get a job working in the very same police station as one of the boys he was with when he disappeared, whose own father JUST HAPPENS TO BE the cop who investigated the original "kidnapping". And it asks us to believe that the cop's son is not only a cop himself now, but is the detective who leads the investigation of the case, 20 years later, despite being with the missing boy on the day he vanished, and clearly a material witness to the crime. And everyone know this, yet no one really questions whether he should be working the case. This would never happen in a U.S. police department, and I don't believe it would happen in a British one either.
Other elements are troubling, too. The missing boy's brother is supposed to be a successful lawyer, yet he never does any actual legal work, and rarely even turns up in his office. The detective operates with very little supervision, and often takes huge blocks of time off to deal with personal matters. (I'd have liked to have that job!) The primary woman in the story is a physician who walks away from a successful practice to work pro bono at a runaway shelter while suffering no adverse economic effects and appearing to be able to do anything she wants whenever she wants, and pay for it. This does not happen in real life (most bosses expect you to, you know, show up for work and DO something for your pay). Every character in this show exists in a world that is utterly unlike ours, where anyone can just disappear from their offices and homes willy-nilly to launch whatever personal crusade they feel like. (There is also a subplot which, while gritty and violent, is entirely irrelevant to the story. By the end of the series this subplot has simply been dropped, with no one impolite enough to ask why.)
The cast is very strong, especially Lee Ingleby, an actor who has yet to disappoint in anything. Ingleby succeeds in distracting us from his character's violence and homicidal solutions. However, the ineffable Honeysuckle Weeks is wasted: Her character could have been played by a doorstop. Tom Cullen largely carries the show, and he is up to it, with a convincing, never over-the-top portrayal of a man obsessed yet consistently rational. Sarah Solemani also manages to make her character credible even when doing things we would expect no mother to do. Like abandoning her own husband and daughter.
As with Coben's novels, it is best not to ask too many questions. Because if you do, you'll see the gears and pulleys that propel this plot for the contrivances they are. And, as with many of these extended series, the whole thing could have been done in, at most, five episodes. It is way too long for a story like this.
Harlan Coben is a pretty good engineer. He knows the tropes we fall for. He knows what kind of situations will garner our empathy, our anger, and our thirst to learn more.
He's also American, and despite the British setting and characters, The Five is really an American series. The accents may be different, but the buttons he pushes were all installed in the U.S. There is no reason this show had to be set where it is: It could be set anywhere in American suburbia, Coben's usual haunt, without changing a damned thing.
MAJOR SPOILERS
The Five relies on some of the most incredible coincidences you will see. And it asks us to accept things that are simply beyond the pale. As for coincidences, we are asked to accept that a young boy, abducted and raised by someone from his neighborhood, just happens to get a job working in the very same police station as one of the boys he was with when he disappeared, whose own father JUST HAPPENS TO BE the cop who investigated the original "kidnapping". And it asks us to believe that the cop's son is not only a cop himself now, but is the detective who leads the investigation of the case, 20 years later, despite being with the missing boy on the day he vanished, and clearly a material witness to the crime. And everyone know this, yet no one really questions whether he should be working the case. This would never happen in a U.S. police department, and I don't believe it would happen in a British one either.
Other elements are troubling, too. The missing boy's brother is supposed to be a successful lawyer, yet he never does any actual legal work, and rarely even turns up in his office. The detective operates with very little supervision, and often takes huge blocks of time off to deal with personal matters. (I'd have liked to have that job!) The primary woman in the story is a physician who walks away from a successful practice to work pro bono at a runaway shelter while suffering no adverse economic effects and appearing to be able to do anything she wants whenever she wants, and pay for it. This does not happen in real life (most bosses expect you to, you know, show up for work and DO something for your pay). Every character in this show exists in a world that is utterly unlike ours, where anyone can just disappear from their offices and homes willy-nilly to launch whatever personal crusade they feel like. (There is also a subplot which, while gritty and violent, is entirely irrelevant to the story. By the end of the series this subplot has simply been dropped, with no one impolite enough to ask why.)
The cast is very strong, especially Lee Ingleby, an actor who has yet to disappoint in anything. Ingleby succeeds in distracting us from his character's violence and homicidal solutions. However, the ineffable Honeysuckle Weeks is wasted: Her character could have been played by a doorstop. Tom Cullen largely carries the show, and he is up to it, with a convincing, never over-the-top portrayal of a man obsessed yet consistently rational. Sarah Solemani also manages to make her character credible even when doing things we would expect no mother to do. Like abandoning her own husband and daughter.
As with Coben's novels, it is best not to ask too many questions. Because if you do, you'll see the gears and pulleys that propel this plot for the contrivances they are. And, as with many of these extended series, the whole thing could have been done in, at most, five episodes. It is way too long for a story like this.