4 out of 5

Created by: David Elkaïm, Vincent Poymiro

Having read less than 1% of Harlan Coben’s books but watched the majority of the television / film adaptations, while I’m not really qualified to weigh in on what makes a good Coben novel – if we accept that there’s likely some type of generalized formula for his book structures – I’m certainly ready to be opinionative about what makes for good cinematic versions of them. And since the “source” is common, and since we see a lot of the same flaws in the adaptations, despite my 1% status I’m going to identify the books as a limiting factor: it is on the creatives behind the TV / movie cameras to upscale some popcorn pulp novels into quality TV. The vast majority of the Cobenverse projects are definitely entertaining – as I’m sure the books are – but I’ll use “quality” a bit more decisively: in which the characters and story actually feel like they matter beyond the shock of whatever final triple twist, and the red herrings along the way.

Aligning with the above, Gone for Good certainly has the trademarks of a Coben story: familial secrets from the past; a mysterious death or disappearance; and the former somehow twisty-turny being the cause of the latter. Its opening sequence bodes, like, negative good will, with cheesy editing and bad wigs giving us a hackneyed, chopped up take of the show’s catalytic event: when Guillame’s (Finnegan Oldfield) girlfriend Sonia (Garance Marillier) and brother Fred (Nicolas Duvauchelle) are both murdered – Sonia strangled and dumped in the pool, and Fred being shot, his body pitched off the pier. An angry bald man (Tómas Lemarquis) glowers at Guillame, gun in hand, and runs away.

A flash-forward ten years or so to the present. Guillame’s mother has just passed; while at the funeral, Guillame’s fiancee, Judith (Nailia Harzoune), gets an upsetting call and must depart.

She does not return, and her actions leading up to this are highly suggestive of this not being her choice.

All of this is pretty clunky. Gone for Good goes for a slim, 5-episode run, and decides – smartly – to put its emphasis on developing its characters, meaning we need to get most of this setup in motion quickly, to which we’ll account the clunkiness. Because once Guillame teams up with friend / workmate Costa (Guillaume Gouix), the following hunt for Judith, with each episode framed around a character, features some of the most impactful, even-handed character work yet seen / written in a Cobenverse adaptation. Either this is nuance lost from most of the books, or GfG’s creators did the extra work, but what’s often – always – missing in these things is the human element: the kind of wandering most of us do between sudden burst of emotions and half-decisiveness; the way we’re all a sum of decisions that are arguably shades of grey, and not holistically “good” or “bad.” Every character in GfG gets painted with these rich, layered strokes, making the mystery of Judith’s disappearance weighty, even beyond when pieces start to slot into place.

To be more charitable, a lot of Coben tales will give maybe a singular character some dimension, but most of them are overly reactive, or spot various versions of plot armor: not asking an obvious question when it would spoil a plot point; getting unreasonably angry or unbelievably “brave” in order to suddenly escalate a scene. Do these things happen in real life? Sure, and we allow them to happy in moving pictures more often for the sake of entertainment; but again – that can often be ephemeral, just to get us to the next scene. Here, with some patience – with Guillame not always knowing what to do next, and he and Costa really having to hit the pavement sometimes for the next thread to pull – all the steps in the story feel very earned; the character-focused flashbacks actually add to the story, if not directly, then indirectly in how they inform that person’s decisions.

Of course, we can’t always have nice things: there are some hokey fight scenes that feel like they were just added in to spice up what some producer thought were flat episodes / moments; these are very out of place, and somewhat… loosely choreographed. And while the (comparatively) short runtime was ultimately a great boon, it inevitably means that some set dressing – Costa’s background, Ines’ dreams – have to have more conceptual relevance than direct. (But at least they have conceptual relevance!)

In short: this was a great adaptation. All of the normal Coben pieces are in place, but this is proof that that doesn’t have to be the ultimate guiding force, or a limitation: you can still craft a compelling piece of character work out of the material, which can only enhance the fun / impact of the inevitable twists and turns.