In the CBS series Harlan Coben’s Final Twist, the best-selling mystery writer — and EP of lots of TV adaptations of those novels — hosts and narrates his first true-crime docuseries. In each episode, Coben brings viewers a new true-crime case that’s as full of as many twists and turns as his novels have. The “final twist” of the show’s title is definitely part of the narrative in each case.
Opening Shot: Harlan Coben walks in a cul-de-sac, introduces himself, and says, “Ideas for mystery novels can come from anywhere.”
The Gist: The first case Coben and his fellow producers examine is the 2012 murders of Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth in Tennessee. The couple was found in their home with bullets in their heads and throats slashed; Billie Jean was still holding their infant son, who survived.
Via interviews with investigators, lawyers and family and friends of the couple, we find out that attention turned to a social media beef between the couple and Jenelle Potter, a friend of Billy Payne’s sister. As authorities find out more about the case, Payne’s cousin Jamie Curd, whom was set up with Janelle as a way of helping her get over Billy and Billie Jean getting together, gets implicated. When he’s interviewed, he claims he was in communication with a friend of Janelle’s named Chris, who claimed he was in the CIA and told him that Billy and Billie Jean were threatening Janelle with harm.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As far as plotting is concerned, Harlan Coben’s Final Twist has a similar structure as shows based on his novels, like Run Away or Fool Me Once. But the true-crime anthology format is more akin to another CBS true-crime series, 48 Hours.
Our Take: We do get that the idea behind the stories presented on Harlan Coben’s Final Twist is that they have a lot of surprises, mainly to mimic what Coben writes into his novels. But most murder stories that have gotten the true-crime docuseries treatment tend to have a lot of twists and turns; if they didn’t, the narrative presented by the producers wouldn’t hold viewers’ interest.
Tying the story together with Coben’s narration and intersitials, then, is more a case of branding than anything else. Coben brings a little bit of insight, like when he talks about how a person like Janelle can be protected from the outside world so much that they don’t even notice that the people protecting them do them harm. But those insights tend to be generic in nature and spoken by Coben in a way that sounds like he’s reading from a cue card.
In fact, Coben’s presence eventually becomes a bit of a liability, when we see him stiffly turning towards a computer monitor, or looking awkwardly off-camera, pretending to further his point with a “well” that sounds as written as the rest of what he’s saying. It gets to the point where we’d rather the time spent watching Coben be uncomfortable was given over to the twisty case, and given the 42-minute network running time, those few minutes are precious commodities.
Performance Worth Watching: Mike Hannon, a special agent for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, is shown using a slow, friendly method of interrogation when questioning Jamie Curd and Janelle Potter’s father Buddy, both of whom were involved in the killings. And, that “calm, country demeanor is just devastating to someone who has something to hide,” says prosecutor Dennis Brooks.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Coben walks through the same cul-de-sac, saying how “digital deception” can lead to murder faster than could even be written in a mystery novel.
Sleeper Star: None we could think of. We just wish someone was able to get more out of Coben than they did.
Most Pilot-y Line: There are a couple of reenactments, with the most glaring one being a group of hands being shown, representing Janelle Potter and her parents, Buddy and Barbara.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the stiff and unnecessary narration by Coben, Harlan Coben’s Final Twist still does a good job of giving viewers lots of surprises in each episode’s brief running time.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
