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The Stranger

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Emily Tsiao

TV Series Review

Adam Price has a good life—a steady job, comfortable home, loving wife and two talented sons. But that all starts to fall apart when a stranger shows up to inform him that his wife’s miscarriage a few years back never happened. Corrine faked the pregnancy. And shortly after being confronted by Adam, Corrine disappears.

Detective Johanna Griffin finds her own life falling apart when her best friend, Heidi, is murdered in cold blood. There’s seemingly no correlation between these two events—besides the fact that the same stranger visited Heidi just before her death.

Who is this stranger? How does she know these things? What’s her game? And more curiously, why does she play it?

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

People are killed both on and off-screen. There’s a beheaded alpaca. We hear the f-word and s-word dropped multiple times. There are no sex scenes, but same-sex relationships and extra-marital affairs are featured in the plot. A teenage boy runs naked through the woods. And that’s all just in the first episode …

With every succeeding episode of The Stranger, another piece of this miniseries murder mystery puzzle is revealed. And with every piece comes not only a series of clues for viewers to decipher, but a series of content issues as well.

Episode Reviews

Jan. 30, 2020: “Episode 1”

After a stranger tells Adam that his wife lied to him, he investigates the clues to find the truth. Meanwhile, Johanna and her partner find a naked, comatose teenage boy in the woods near the scene of another crime.

We see the beheaded body of an alpaca surrounded by a pool of blood. There is a bite mark from human teeth on the alpaca’s leg. We later see the decapitated head. A boy is found comatose with several cuts and bruises on his body. A woman is threatened by a man.

A teenage boy runs nude. (His rear end is visible, but his front is obscured by dark shadows). We see a man in his underwear. A teenage couple makes out while lying on a bed. Couples kiss. A man talks about dating older men. People talk about divorces and affairs. Someone jokes about bestiality. A woman purchases a fake pregnancy kit online and uses it to lie to her husband. She later fakes a miscarriage and cries as her husband comforts her. A stillborn child is brought up in conversation.

Teenagers party and drink alcohol in the woods. Adults drink in a pub. A woman has multiple glasses of wine. Someone smokes a cigarette. We hear multiple uses of the f-word and s-word, as well as several misuses of God’s and Christ’s names. Other curse words include “d–k,” “pr–k,” “h—,” “a—” and “p-ss.” A teenager is scolded by his parents for cursing and insists that “crap” is not a curse word.

A mother worries that her daughter is depressed, and we see the girl holding herself and crying as she looks at something on her phone. Someone suggests that there’s nepotism in a community sports program. A woman gags. Someone talks about vomit.

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Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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