Susan Granger’s review of “The Last Thing He Told Me” (Apple TV+)
Adapted from Laura Dave’s 2001 best-seller, the limited series “The Last Thing He Told Me” finds relatively newly married Hannah (Jennifer Garner) teaming up with her 16 year-old step-daughter Bailey (Angoiurie Rice) to track down her husband Owen Michaels (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who has gone missing.
Hannah’s a wood-working artist. She and widower Owen live with truculent Bailey in scenic Sausalito, California, in an expensive floating home that looks straight out of Architectural Digest.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter,” Owen tells Hannah, perhaps foreshadowing his mysterious disappearance when the tech firm he works for is suddenly under FBI investigation.
Then Hannah finds a cryptic note instructing, “Protect her” – along with a duffle bag stuffed with cash. And lurking around their home is a suspicious man named Grady (Augusto Aguilera), who claims to be a U.S. Marshal, insisting that he just wants to protect Owen.
So where has Owen gone? And why did he suddenly vanish?
Slowly, very slowly, Hannah and Bailey begin to unravel the secrets of Owen’s – and Bailey’s past – a search that leads them to a football stadium, in Austin, Texas, where Bailey has some vaguely repressed memories from her childhood.
Adapted by author Laura Dave and Josh Singer (“Spotlight”), it’s an interesting premise but lacks the kind of edgy urgency that would make it into a compelling thriller.
FYI: Julia Roberts was originally intended to start in this series – produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine – but she had scheduling conflicts.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Last Thing He Told Me” is an escapist 6 – with all seven episodes streaming on Apple TV+.
