2 out of 5

Directed by: Michał Gazda, Bartosz Konopka

While Hold Tight – when held up against other Harlan Coben adaptations – deserves props for not sinking into the usual redundant red herring-ing, and effectively keeps the viewer in the same plotty darkness as its characters and not leaving too many “but why would they do X…?” story gaps for us to continually stumble over. Unfortunately, the show ends up doubling back on proving the “need” for those indulgences / flaws that are common to other Coben shows, as Hold Tight’s story becomes a frustrating nothingburger that waits too long to get to its reveals (even in a 6-episode format versus the standard 8 or 10), causing stray plotthreads to become somewhere between pointless and offensive. Indeed.

Hold Tight (or Zachowaj spokój in the original Polish) stars Magdalena Boczarska as Anna, matriarch of the Barczyk family – one of several living in a rather affluent neighborhood, allowing us to easily bounce between the other rich families nearby, and see how / if they tie in to the show’s central conceit: the death of a neighbor’s son, Igor, and the subsequent disappearance of Adam (Krzysztof Oleksyn), Igor’s friend and Anna’s son.

Anna, being a Cobenverse female lead, has to be somewhat overbearing and needy; meanwhile, cool dad / husband Michał (Leszek Lichota) tries to suggest that she pushed Adam away, and he’ll probably come back soon. But Anna knows… something is wrong. She pushes to investigate, and gets the usual rigmarole from the coppers, who are depicted with interesting Polish flair as competent but professionally uncaring: until Adam is gone for 48 hours yadda yadda; and then once 48 hours have passed, he’s technically an adult yadda yadda…

Snide remarks aside, Anna’s and Michał’s relationship, especially once the latter is on board with the search, is pretty well depicted – they have a realistic balance of affection and microaggressions; for better or worse, Anna’s indirect gaslighting, while not intentionally depicted as such, feels realistic. The script / Boczarska and Lichota also juggle the stresses of caring for “adult” children very well, where you’re forever stuck between wanting to be there for them but not wanting to push too much. And the cops are fun. They’re weird – they’re meant to be an odd couple – but Adam Nawojczyk as chief Trybala and Julia Wyszynska as detective Miller are great playing off of one another, and how their apparent coldness plays off against interviewees or the Barczyks.

For about the first three episodes, we’re good with the usual Cobenverse approach of dropping seemingly unconnected tangents – a neighbor whose daughter is being bullied at school; a serial killer couple who’s kidnapping girls and demanding mysterious information from them; Adam’s creepy friends at school, clearly hiding some something about Adam – while the main story of Anna’s hunt for her son continues, drips and drabs of information she discovers pulling her investigation along. But once we cross that halfway point without any real connection between those tangents, nor any tangible progress on the hunt, there’s some hope / indication that this will be the rare Coben project that turns out to actually be about characters, and not twists and turns, and that bumps things onto the positive side for another episode or so.

However… during that episode, beyond the relative positives with the characters I’ve mentioned, there’s really not much growth. A late reveal – which would’ve been a better red herring earlier on – furthermore fully establishes that the writers had no clue it was 2022, trashing Anna’s / Michał’s relationship to something more befitting something from decades ago. I can’t really talk about it without spoiling the “twist,” and it is, again, unfortunately probably a realistic depiction of many relationships, but I’d expect modern media to give some more perspective on the situation, and its “resolution” furthermore shows that the writers / producers / etc. had no desire to do so. Extend this vibe to pretty much all of the subplots, and even to the main story itself, which bends over backwards to explain-it-all in the final episode in a way that feels like it renders the entire series as one of those “But why would they do X…?” questions, which is definitely not the note you want to go out on.