Nr. 24 (John Andreas Andersen, Netflix, 2024) & Missing You (Harlan Coben, Netflix series, 2025)

Nr 24 is a gripping World War II drama from Norway, which tells the story of Gunnar Sønsteby, who became known as Norway’s greatest resistance fighter.

Working from a script by Erlend Loe and Espen Lauritzen von Ibenfeldt, the movie is directed by John Andreas Andersen, who has previously made disaster drama’s like The Quake (2018) and The North Sea (2021), but who proves to be equally adept with the war genre.

Nr. 24 works on various different levels. At first, it’s a pretty standard biographical movie. It shows that Gunnar - played as a young man by Sjur Vatne Brean - started to resist the Nazi’s on the first day of the war.

But while many of his friends died, he showed great skill at planning ahead and avoiding the Germans, which led him to being trained in Scotland and later coming back for more daring work, like blowing up buildings and munition factories, as the right hand man of Norway resistance leader Jens Christian Hauge and leading the so-called Oslo Gang.

The movie moves up a notch thematically when it comes to assassinating fellow Norwegians because they work for the Nazi’s or are traitors threatening to expose Gunnar and his fellow compatriots. Who has the moral high ground here? Who decides over life and death? And how can you know you have made the right decisions?

These questions are raised at a college lecture when the older Gunnar (Erik Hivju) is confronted by the great-granddaughter (Flo Fagerli) of one of his victims. Which leads to a spirited debate, which also raises valid questions about non-violent solutions to violent situations.

Still, the movie doesn’t waver on one basic principle: that sometimes you have to fight to live in freedom, even if that means making painful decisions which lead to heartbreaking conclusions.

These moral dilemmas make the well-made and well-acted Nr. 24 - which happened Gunnar’s to be code name - much more than just another World War II drama.

I give it four stars!

MISSING YOU (Netflix series, 2025)

Oh and Happy New Year, by the way to each and everyone! But these days it is not a proper new year if there isn’t a new Harlan Coben series on Netflix to go along with it. This year it’s Missing You, based on Coben’s eponymous bestseller from 2014.

Last year’s Fool Me Once was such a success that I’m not surprised Netflix stuck to the January 1 release date. Missing You (adapted by Victoria Asare-Archer and directed by Nimer Rashed and Isher Sahota) offers more of the same, but in a good way.

Once again there is a (usually female) protagonist living in suburbia who finds that she may be through with the past, but the past isn’t quite through with her.

This time it’s Detective Inspector Kat Donovan (the excellent Rosalind Eleazar, of Slow Horses fame), whose life is suddenly upended after a period of relative calm, in which her main problem seemed to be that she couldn’t the right man to share her life with. Maybe that’s because Kat had already lost the two men in her life that she really loved.

Ten years earlier Kat’s father, who was also a police officer, was murdered, and even the culprit was subsequently convicted, he never gave any motive.

To make matters worse, Kat’s boyfriend Josh (Ashley Walters, also great) suddenly walked out on her. And not just that, he completely ghosted her, wiping all his traces from the internet.

So imagine Kat’s surprise when in the present she first sees Josh pop up on a dating site. And then she meets a guy who tells her that his mother has disappeared after going on a date with Josh. Suddenly it seems that Josh is not just a lousy boyfriend, but perhaps something much worse.

And as Kat works for the police she soon finds herself in another missing person’s cast. It’s enough to put that old John Waite song Missing You in your head, but of course Harlan Coben (who is also in his fifties) knows that song too and already put it in his book.

Missing You is a five part series that is just made to be binged. One plot twist is followed by the next and if you miss something (maybe because you are suffering from a hangover after New Year’s Eve) there are enough plot recaps to tide you over.

I wouldn’t mind seeing once again a somewhat more ambitious Coben series in the vein of the child abduction-thriller Safe (with Michael C. Hall from Dexter in the lead).

Or even better, the Spanish adaptation The Innocent (by the great Oriol Paulo) which remains the touchstone for all Coben adaptations.

But if it’s a cheeseburger you crave, Missing You will definitely fill that need.

The series looks good (as usual the US location from the books has changed into the greater Manchester area for the series), there are (relatively small roles this time) for Coben regulars James Nesbitt and Richard Armitage, while the rest of the supporting cast is filled out with interesting faces perhaps more than interesting characters, but who all at the very least add something of note to the plot.

At times it seems that Kat is the last person on earth to find out things about her life, that appear to be common knowledge to other people in her life.

Nevertheless, she is an active protagonist and when Kat gets going, even the tough will have a hard time catching up with her.

Which makes Missing You fun to watch.

So, same time, next year, I guess?

i give it 3 1/2 stars!