**THE UGLY: 'SAFE'**

WRITING: 50
ACTING: 75
LOOK: 80
SOUND: 50
FEEL: 60
NOVELTY: 40
ENJOYMENT: 65
RE-WATCHABILITY: 60
INTRIGUE: 60
EXPECTATIONS: 60

----

**The Good:**

It's oddly comical to watch the Marshall family try to solve the problem they have at hand, only to fall deeper into the home they've dug up for themselves.

Hall and Warren are great together, like two police officers in buddy cop movies.

Unlike other Coben crime series, Safe keeps the number of different plot strands at a minimum and develops each of them fairly evenly. All of them feel connected to the larger story.

If you stick around for the second half of the series, you'll be rewarded with growing intensity and a growing level of danger.

I like the director's decision to use extreme closeups of people's faces during emotionally intense moments. The technique captures every emotion effectively.

----

**The Bad:**

The plot feels very generic, with genre cliches and typical Harlan Coben elements sprinkled everywhere. Coupled with a sluggish pace during the first half of the series, it never feels like it truly gets going before it's over.

There are plenty of narrative shortcuts thrown into the script to save time, even when it doesn't make sense from a real-life point of view.

A bit disappointed that the conclusion arrives with little proper build-up since the series develops other plots and red herrings until the last episode. There are no real clues dropped, meaning that it's almost impossible to work stuff out as you go along.

----

**The Ugly:**

That's one of the rules of crime fiction broken.

----

**VERDICT:**

_A rewarding slow-burner wanders through genre cliches and narrative shortcuts to arrive at a surprising conclusion._

**60% = :heavy_minus_sign: = UGLY**