The Truth About the Harry Quert Affair or How to Ruin a Peaceful Seaside Town

   There I was, scrolling through Prime Video, expecting something light and easy for the evening. Maybe a cheerful rom-com, a bit of nonsense, something with a talking dog. Instead, I ended up watching The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, which is basically ten hours of small-town America losing its collective mind in glorious high definition.

It begins innocently enough. A quiet town by the sea. Birds chirping. Everyone pretending to be normal. Then, within minutes, someone digs up the body of a teenage girl in the garden of a famous writer, and suddenly the whole place makes Broadchurch look like The Teletubbies.

Patrick Dempsey, who we last saw charming nurses and melting hearts in Grey’s Anatomy, now plays Harry Quebert, a tortured author who wrote one great novel and has spent the rest of his life staring moodily at the ocean, probably waiting for inspiration or a decent sandwich. He’s accused of murdering a fifteen-year-old girl who was his so-called muse, which is both morally questionable and professionally disastrous.

Enter Marcus Goldman, his former student, a young writer suffering from that classic creative affliction known as writer’s block. The poor lad hasn’t had an original idea since the invention of instant noodles. So when his old mentor gets accused of murder, he does the logical thing. He heads to Maine, sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong, and decides to write a book about it. Because of course he does.

From there, the show becomes a tangled mess of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and more emotional breakdowns than a Fiat Panda with a dodgy alternator. Every episode reveals a new secret, a new lie, and a new reason to distrust absolutely everyone. By the halfway mark, I was convinced that the postman, the cat, and possibly the town’s fishmonger were all involved.

The scenery is so American it hurts. Endless pine forests, diners that only serve black coffee, and people who say things like “we don’t talk about that summer.” You can practically smell the damp wood and emotional repression.

Patrick Dempsey, though, is magnificent. He spends most of the series looking beautifully haunted, like a man who’s just realised his car warranty expired yesterday. You can see the guilt, the pride, the ego, and the faint confusion of someone wondering how their career went from rom-coms to corpses.

The real magic of the show is that it’s never quite what it seems. One minute you think it’s a murder mystery, the next it’s a story about art, morality, and the rotten price of genius. It’s as if someone took Twin Peaks, Gone Girl, and a GCSE essay about ethics, put them in a blender, and hit turbo.

By the final episode, your brain will be spinning faster than a V8 on the Nürburgring. You’ll think you’ve solved it at least six times, only to be proven completely wrong. It’s exhausting, it’s brilliant, and it’s just unhinged enough to make you wonder why you ever trusted anyone who writes novels.

So, should you watch it? Absolutely. Just don’t expect a relaxing evening. This is the kind of series that grabs you by the shirt, throws you into a foggy forest, and shouts “figure it out yourself.”

Verdict:

Four stars out of five. Dark, clever, moody, and beautifully ridiculous. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is proof that in America, nothing good ever happens in a small town with too much fog and too many secrets.