Forget “Nashville’s Big Bash,” “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” and Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper taking advantage of CNN’s refreshment budget. TV’s favorite New Year’s tradition is quickly becoming a Netflix crime drama that keeps dropping the ball in terms of plot, dialogue, and everything to do with human nature.

In fact, following the success of “Stay Close” and “Fool Me Once,” the streaming giant is once again ringing in the new year with the help of potboiler extraordinaire Harlan Coben. This time it’s his 2014 novel “Missing You,” coming to the small screen in five episodes, equipped with precision tools to stuff yourself with the leftovers from your party. And it may be the most far-fetched yet, not much of a stretch considering previous ventures have included everything from decapitated alpacas and fake-dead partners to a murderous cabaret duo named Ken and Barbie.

Named after the ’80s chart-topper of the same name, which plays during an overused flashback (it’s fair to say that John Waite shouldn’t expect a “Murder on the Dancefloor”-style renaissance), Rosalind Eleazar (“Slow Horses”) stars in “Missing You” stars. ) as Kat Donovan, a detective inspector who, like all Coben protagonists, has an unnecessarily mysterious past.

For one thing, her beloved police officer father Clint (Lenny Henry takes on the role of comedian and straight man previously held by Jennifer Saunders, Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley) died eleven years ago at the hands of a twisted killer (or did he?). For another, a journalist’s former boyfriend who suddenly vanished without a trace shortly after has now appeared on Melody Cupid, a music-based dating app that probably won’t give Tinder bosses many sleepless nights (users are urged – be prepared to groan – “) harmonize or mute”).

Could the two be somehow connected? Kat is a resourceful heroine, as evidenced by the chilly opening in which she takes on an injured, knife-wielding chef with Lara Croft-like efficiency. And after a tearful meeting with Monte Leburne (Marc Warren), the terminally ill man convicted of her father’s murder, the plot thickens even more and she makes it her mission to uncover the truth.

Of course, since this is a Coben adaptation, it’s constantly bogged down by various incredibly frustrating twists, surprises, and cliffhangers, not to mention that every single person in her inner circle has an almost pathological aversion to the truth.

In fact, poor Kat spends most of her time being gaslighted, castigated, or intentionally upset by people she trusts without any credible explanation. “You’ve got to put an end to this,” remarks Chief Stagger (Richard Armitage in his fourth Coben series), daring to suggest that Leburne’s conviction may not be as sound as first thought. “Don’t you dare judge him,” her mother Odette (Brigid Zengeni) barks as Kat also learns that her father was not the upstanding member of society she had always imagined.

This reticence is at odds with the characters’ tendency to speak like a Wikipedia biography elsewhere. “He hurt you badly, he left you when you were grieving,” the private investigator’s best friend, Stacey (Jessica Plummer), helpfully reminds Kat of ex-Josh’s (Ashley Walters) departure, a typically stark example of the “tell-don’t-show” approach to the miniseries Exposition: Although Victoria Asare-Archer is credited as the sole screenwriter (usual suspect Danny Brocklehurst is attached as executive producer instead board), the script has a strong atmosphere of chat GPT.

However, Kat has more than just father and boy issues to deal with. As loyal Coben viewers will expect, “Missing You” weaves several other ridiculous storylines into its tangled web; A Beatle-haired teenager suspects there may be a sinister force behind his mother’s abrupt trip to Costa Rica; A shady financial advisor unwittingly facilitates a cam girl scam from the comfort of his man cave; And the most ridiculous thing of all is that a disciplinarian dog breeder is using his farm as a front for a kidnapping/torture camp.

Yes, further proof that the series’ police force is as incompetent as it is evasive, they have managed to kidnap, defraud and, in most cases, brutally execute an almost impressive number of locals under their noses. Not to mention that his operation is hopelessly straightforward – the victims are fished out using photos taken not from the other side of the world, but essentially from further down – or that he receives multiple life sentences for relatively paltry amounts (around 20,000 US dollars per capita). “Missing You” asks us to believe that Titus (Steve Pemberton, who performs it like a pantomime villain) is a criminal mastermind similar to Hans Gruber.

Still, Pemberton is one of the few actors who seems aware of the madness in which they’re starring. Even seasoned pros like Armitage and Coben regular James Nesbitt, briefly returned here as a malevolent terror from the past, struggle to infuse any sense of personality into their humorless cardboard cutouts. So it’s hard to care when all the cheesy secrets finally come to light in a finale that somehow manages to be simultaneously overstuffed and distinctly disappointing.

Still, Netflix will undoubtedly be happy with what they paid for (Coben still has at least two years and four adaptations left on the lucrative deal first signed in 2018). From plucky heroines who take matters into their own hands to the up-and-coming kitchens you’d expect to see in Architectural Digest, “Missing You” adheres to all the Coben tropes that made “Fool Me Once” the surprise hit of the year have made.

As Kat herself says after being forced to listen to her umpteenth tall tale, “It makes no sense… your story makes no sense.” But in Coben’s ever-expanding, all-conquering world, nonsense is a virtue.

“Missing You” is now streaming on Netflix.