Gated communities are created to feel safer; high walls and security are in place to prevent nefarious people from causing mischief. However, not all danger comes from the outside. Sometimes, more often than people are willing to admit, it comes from within a community.
Netflix’s series Safe takes place in a private community in England, where the residents are suddenly faced with the terrible reality that their precious gates are not capable of keeping them safe. This discovery comes after a father discovers that his eldest daughter, Jenny, has gone missing after not returning home after a night out with her friends. His first step is to visit the home of his daughter’s boyfriend, Chris, only to find that he’s also missing. The parental concern is magnified after learning that Chris has turned up dead.
So where is Jenny and who killed Chris?
These are only the first of many questions that viewers will ask as they fall deeper down the rabbit hole with Jenny’s father Tom (played by Dexter’s Michael C. Hall) as he tries to unravel the circumstances of the night that Jenny went missing. It seems the residents of the gated community are keeping more secrets than one would expect from a delicate slice of suburbia and may lead the audience to question their own neighbors.
After all, as one of the show’s detectives points out, you can never truly know someone.
The series artfully employs misdirection, leading the viewer to anticipate the standard plot twists that TV watchers have come to expect, only to have those twists flipped on their head.
Safe is available with eight 45-minute episodes on Netflix. The show is rated TV-MA for language and some mature content. Viewers may also enjoy Seven Seconds, a Netflix thriller about an accident and an elaborate cover-up.