'Missing You' Is Netflix's New Year's Day 2025 Debut

People underestimated Netflix when it started making original programming because they mistook the streaming service for wanting to be HBO (or, at the time, AMC or FX). However, from the beginning, Netflix's goal was to replace TV. Not just TV in the U.S., but in every country; global domination by single entertainment provider. It aimed at all the American TV markers first: PBS costume dramas, Bravo Reality fare, Network dating shows, and Lifetime Christmas Movies. Recently, the service has focused on TV traditions of other countries, including competing in the U.K.'s "New Year's Day Debut Derby," and for 2025, it's bringing the big guns with Harlan Coben's Missing You. 

As the BBC's complete domination of the U.K. airwaves finally began to end in the late 1990s, it began competing with the new upstarts like Channels 4, 5, and ITV by leaning in the long-running favorites in its arsenal and populating the winter holidays with one-off Christmas specials that would bring viewers in faithfully every year. Nowadays, it's standard practice for every U.K. channel to competitively program Christmas Week and New Year's Day, with the first of January hosting the debuts of recent shows like Mr Bates vs the Post Office, The Serpent, the return of Happy Valley, Call the Midwife, both seasons of The Tourist, and Planet Earth III.

Netflix started horning in on this a couple of years ago, when it accidentally debuted another Coben film, Stay Close, on New Year's Eve 2022, only to see it blow up as THE show to watch the next morning as 2023 dawned. For New Year's Day 2024, Netflix tested another Coben film in the slot, Fool Me Once, this time, dropping it on the day, and got even more viewers (though it lost out to Mr. Bates in the final totals). Missing You will technically be the second film in a row to debut on New Year's in the U.K., but it's looking to be Netflix's third New Year's hit overall.

Here is the synopsis for the newest Harlan Coben film:

Eleven years ago, Detective Kat Donovan's fiancé Josh - the love of her life - disappeared, and she's never heard from him since. Now, swiping profiles on a dating app, she suddenly sees his face, and her world explodes all over again. Josh's reappearance will force her to dive back into the mystery surrounding her father’s murder and uncover long-buried secrets from her past.

Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses) leads the cast as Det Kat Donovan, co-starring alongside Jessica Plummer (The Decameron) as her BFF Stacey Embalo, and Lenny Henry (Three Little Birds) as Kat's late father, Clint Donovan. 

The series co-stars Jo Martin (The Marlow Murder Club), James Nesbitt (Bloodlands), Paul Kaye (Game of Thrones), Samantha Spiro (Sex Education), Lisa Faulkner (The Girl Before), Steve Pemberton (Good Omens), Ashley Walters (Top Boy), Matt Willis (Agatha Christie's Marple), Mary Malone (Doctor Who), Felix Garcia Guyer (D.I. Ray), Charlie Hamblett (Killing Eve), Oscar Kennedy (The White Queen), Brigid Zengeni (Totally Completely Fine), and Catherine Ayers (Who Is Erin Carter).

Oh, and because it's not a Proper New Year's Day Harlan Coben film without him, last but not least, Richard Armitage will also have a significant role in Missing You.

Victoria Asare-Archer penned all episodes with directors Sean Spencer and Isher Sahota splitting helming duties on the five-episode series and Guy Hescott producing. Coben, Shindler, Asare-Archer, Richard Fee, and Danny Brocklehurst executive produce.

Missing You will debut on Netflix on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, New Year's Day. Netflix already has its next adaptation of a Coben novel, Run Away, greenlit and ready to film.