This Wild ‘The Fugitive’ Knockoff Is Your Next Netflix Binge

So pulpy you’re apt to need floss after each episode, I Will Find You gets high marks for concision and energy but considerably lower grades for plausibility.

A beach paperback thriller in eight-episode streaming form, Robert Hull’s Netflix adaptation of Harlan Coben’s bestseller is the rare modern TV effort to never dawdle. Unfortunately, though, its fleet pace is due to plotting that’s too rife with convenient twists and instantaneous deductions—and, courtesy of its story’s particulars, resembles a Temu version of The Fugitive.

This is as heinous as crimes get, but as David intones in an introductory narration, he did not do it. Problem is, he can’t prove that, so he’s stuck behind bars in a Maine penitentiary whose warden, Philip (Peter Outerbridge), is the former law enforcement partner of David’s dad Lenny (Hugh Thompson), who’s dying of cancer.

[Warning: Minor spoilers follow]

David feels so guilty for not protecting his son from harm that he’s refused visitors for his first five years in prison. That changes when his sister-in-law Rachel Mills (Severance’s Britt Lower) appears out of nowhere with a bombshell: his son Matthew is visible in the background of a photo taken at an amusement park.

That the boy is alive is a shock, especially since everything at trial pointed to David’s culpability. Making this situation crazier still, in the aftermath of learning that his son isn’t six feet underground, David narrowly survives two attempts on his life—indicating that there’s a conspiracy afoot to keep the truth buried.

In response to these events, David does what anyone in his circumstances would do—he stages a high-stakes prison break with the aid of some oh-so-opportune friends. Chief among those accomplices is Rachel, whose career as a Boston newspaper reporter fell apart and who can’t help but see this amazing tale as her possible ticket back to the journalistic big leagues.

I Will Find You lays this groundwork in its initial two breakneck installments and never stops to catch its breath, with David and Rachel going on the run in search of clues that’ll exonerate him, and the series dramatizes their mission with regular bouts of action—shootouts! Car chases! Hostage crises!—that are at once intense and preposterous.

I Will Find You resembles a serialized CBS procedural even as it mimics The Fugitive. Striving to demonstrate his innocence and reunite with Matthew, David is pursued by two FBI agents, esteemed hard-nosed veteran Max Williams (Chi McBride) and his younger partner Sarah Greer (Logan Browning), the latter of whom actually has a stand-off with David on a downtown Boston rooftop that’s akin to Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones’ big-screen dam drain pipe stand-off.

Suffice it to say, this comparison is not flattering for Hull’s show.

Because they’re in dire straits, Rachel turns to old flame Hayden Payne (Milo Ventimiglia), whose mom, Gertrude (Madeleine Stowe), is the head of their family’s lucrative company. In I Will Find You’s first half, he serves as an expedient plot device, providing them with a place to stay, money, weapons, and intel.

Such paint-by-numbers storytelling is indicative of the entire enterprise, whose characters are always assessing and interpreting their circumstances at the speed of light. This keeps the proceedings moving, yet it also renders them silly, since no one ever has to even momentarily think about (much less discuss in detail) a given predicament before immediately figuring out the correct thing to do.

I Will Find You is filled with additional men and women who might have set up David, including his pregnant doctor ex-wife Cheryl (Erin Richards), her new hospital administrator beau Ronald (Aaron Ashmore), a high school acquaintance known as Skunk (Billy MacLellan), and a shadowy operative named Stavros (Greg Bryk), who keeps careful tabs on David and Rachel as they scurry about Boston and New York. It’s all a lot of movement and insinuation with no serious depth, and at a certain point, the material devolves into a glorified soap opera, with multiple episodes culminating in ominous (red-herring) cliffhangers and the cast acting as much as is humanly possible.

It’s as if the stars are in a scenery-chewing contest, and at the end of this competition, no one comes close to besting McBride, who can’t stop indulging in exaggerated no-nonsense bluster.

Despite successfully using commotion to compensate for illogicality in its early going, I Will Find You eventually succumbs to ridiculousness, with the answer to its mystery predicated on a handful of bombshells that make scant sense. As the show’s Wrong Man, Worthington is his usual featureless self, and Lower doesn’t acquit herself any better as Rachel, delivering a perfunctory performance as a woman who has no qualms about repeatedly risking her life and reputation for her ex-brother-in-law and nephew.

Everyone else, meanwhile, is a by-the-books stereotype, including the criminal baddies (led by Clancy Brown’s Nicky Fisher) who additionally factor into this saga, as well as David’s relatives and Sarah’s peripheral FBI boss.

I Will Find You’s fundamental goofiness is both the force that keeps it watchable and the Achilles’ heel that prevents it from resonating beyond a loopy lark about unstoppable paternal love. Murders, double crosses, and secret alliances are the building blocks of this breakneck endeavor, and in a streaming-television age dominated by foot-dragging series, there’s some pleasure to be had from going along for a self-contained ride that prizes liveliness above all else.

There’s rarely any doubt about where it’s heading (at least in general terms), and Worthington and Lower are hardly magnetic enough to make it must-see TV. But as a corny riff on prior, more illustrious crime-fiction ancestors, it makes for a tasty high-calorie, low-nutrition binge.