New Apple TV+ thriller gets off to an unspectacular, understated start LONDON: Knowing that Apple’s new miniseries “The Last Thing He Told Me” is based on Laura Dave’s bestselling thriller actually does it a lot of favors. Stories don’t tend to spend 65 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller List without having something going for them, and it’s comforting to know that, despite a largely underwhelming opening two episodes, this show probably has some narrative gas left in the tank. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @arabnews.lifestyle San Francisco-based artist Hannah finds herself in the midst of a conspiratorial whirlwind when her tech-wizard husband Owen simply doesn’t come home from work one day. To make matters worse, he leaves a cryptic note asking Hannah to protect his daughter Bailey, and a duffel bag stuffed full of cash. Soon enough, the already fractious relationship between Hannah and her stepdaughter is put under even greater scrutiny as the pair desperately try to find out why Owen abandoned them with no warning. All of that information could have been gleaned from the series’ trailer. And the reason the first two episodes of this seven-part series feel a little on the creaky side is that they do little to shed more light on where the story might be headed. Jennifer Garner stars as Hannah, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Owen and Angourie Rice as Bailey. They’re all fine. Some of the dialog feels a little overwrought, and the ramping of the tension strays into melodrama, but that’s all fine too. The whole thing is…fine, as slow-boiling thrillers go. Hannah and Owen do seem sufficiently saccharine during flashbacks that anyone who has watched a crime- or thriller-related TV show might suspect he has a whole ‘secret life’ thing going on, but then subtlety (particularly in the crowded space of streaming services) is not exactly common in the genre. “The Last Thing He Told Me” is, at least, beautifully shot and a pleasure to look at, so as long as the story has a surprise or two somewhere along the way, this could be a show worth sticking with. But it would have been great to see some evidence of that in the first couple of hours.