‘Fool Me Once’ Netflix Series Review - Beautiful England

A wife, Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan), soberly asks her mother-in-law, Judith Burkett (Joanna Lumley), if her husband, Joe (Richard Armitage), is actually dead. This question arises because Maya sees her dead husband on a nanny cam. Well, everyone attended Joe's funeral, and his mother identified his body in the hospital. So how can the man be actually alive? Did he fake his death? Maybe the mother, too, is a part of some secret game.

Fool Me Once instantly hooks you with all these questions. It's adapted from the Harlan Coben novel of the same name. We recently got another adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel - Prime Video's Shelter. That series, too, intrigued us with its initial incidents. The three main characters in Shelter had a delightful chemistry with each other, which emerged as the series' only strength because the latter reveals turned out to be exceptionally underwhelming. Fool Me Once, on the other hand, has ludicrous (and slightly enjoyable) final moments, but the characters here are extremely bland.

I have not read any of Harlan Coben's books, though based on Shelter and Fool Me Once, I can see why streaming services would green-light the adaptations. These are precisely the kinds of stories that give rise to large viewing numbers. The viewer passively watches the show without getting bored because something or the other keeps happening in the show. Fool Me Once has so many things on its plate that you can isolate each event and create a sharp 90-minute feature out of them. The show, however, is not interested in providing satisfaction. It merely keeps itself busy for almost eight hours.

The audience becomes a detective while watching a murder mystery where everyone is a suspect. During the first couple of episodes, you try to figure out what's going on in Fool Me Once. You attempt to catch the truth before the characters. After a while, however, your brain goes into hibernation. Blame it all on the unremarkable style. The camera is solely occupied with recording the ongoing events. Not a single scene manages to put us in the proximity of the characters or their feelings, for that matter. A shaky war footage momentarily wakes our senses. A police officer's deteriorating health never feels urgent. The characters look disconnected from each other. Even when they are in the same frame, it seems as if they are emotionally distant from one another.

One can say that the actors just wait for their cues to deliver their dialogues. They also look pristine and dirt-free. They don't sweat; they don't even perspire (except during that one scene where a woman is torn between following an order and ignoring it). Keegan's make-up is perfectly intact. She resembles a magazine cover model. Instead of worrying about her character's situation, you admire her face, and her hair. The show has a shiny, plastic aesthetic, which renders everything textureless. The streets are spotless, and the houses are luxurious. If nothing else, Fool Me Once expertly doubles up as a tourism video singing praises of the beauty of England.

Final Score- [4/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times