Caught, yet another Harlan Coben mystery series

Caught is another in Netflix seemingly endless supply of mystery series derived from the novels of Harlan Coben. This one is set in a small city in Patagonia, Argentina.

Caught stars Ema (Soledad Villamil) as a well known investigative reporter who has a series of articles called “Caught” in which she finds culprits the police have been unable to catch and records herself doing it for publication.

This was one of the least comprehensible of Coben’s mysteries. That was partly due to the odd way of using flashbacks. I finally realized every episode began with a flashback, but it was not obvious at first. I was also confused by the colossal number of stupid mistakes the characters made based on jumping to conclusions without all the facts.

Even Ema, the main character, was guilty of damaging people by jumping the gun with publication without sufficient investigation. Plot twists and surprises were built on that faulty thinking as the mystery unfolded, but not before several innocent people were hurt.

The crime Ema and her assistant at the newspaper Vicky (Bárbara Massó) were currently working involved a grown man who lured young girls into meeting him in secluded places by playing a video game with them and carrying on long chat sessions getting them to trust him.

So far the police, led by Comisario Herrera (Fernán Mirás), had been unable to catch the man. A high school girl named Martina (Carmela Rivero), who was a talented violinist, was the current victim in this story. There were a lot of other teens involved in the story, among them was Ema’s son Bruno (Matías Recalt).

Ema talked to many people as she searched for what had happened to Martina. Leo (Alberto Ammann) worked with kids and Ema liked him. Leo ran a foundation for kids. Leo’s lifelong friend Marcos (Juan Minujín) also had a teenager who knew Martina. All these characters and more drew scrutiny from Ema and the police as people were killed or disappeared.

The mini-series has six episodes, some as much as an hour long. I loved the setting in Patagonia, but was not impressed by the acting. I watched it in Spanish to hear the voice work of the original actors, but didn’t find anyone I could connect with. It was partly because the characters made such stupid assumptions and acted on them – there wasn’t anyone to like. The subplots seemed to add more confusion than enlightenment. Overall, I found this to be the least interesting of the Harlan Coben series on Netflix.

It’s in Spanish, but dubbing is available if you want it. This trailer is dubbed in English. If you loved it, please share why in the comments.