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The Stranger made a big change from the book

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

From Digital Spy

Note: The Stranger spoilers follow.

Brimming with mystery, The Stranger on Netflix is hooked on the tantalizing premise of secrets exposed, lives uprooted and the turmoil that ensues.

As the stranger (Black Mirror's Hannah John Kamen) disrupts her marks' lives by revealing secrets, Adam (played by Richard Armitage) attempts to uncover the truth behind his wife's disappearance.

Based on Harlen Coben's novel of the same name, this series is a bingeable watch that draws the audience in as it promises to uncover new dark secrets with each episode. But there is one crucial difference between the Netflix adaptation and the original novel: in the book, the stranger is a white man.

Originally called Chris Taylor, the stranger is a man intent on exposing other people's secrets as a mode of justice. A response to his own traumatising realisation that his father was not his biological parent, Chris' pursuit of truth is his own way of policing morality. But in the show, white man Chris has been transformed into biracial woman Chrissy.

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

Related: Netflix's The Stranger introduces "a very different role" for Buffy's Anthony Head

According to Coben, this was not always the plan: "We did have a lot of auditions and it wasn't really working, we tried with guys and then Hannah was there and it was like 'bam'."

Although not the original aim, casting a biracial woman in the role is undeniably great for representation on screen. And this will definitely have been on the author's mind.

In an interview with Variety, he said: "We live in a golden age of crime fiction. It's never been done better by a wider variety of people and genders and nationalities."

Not just a way of re-telling his story with an actor who really clicked with the role, then, this gender and race-swap is also an illustration of the important impact of on-screen representation.

And the swap also has clear feminist undertones. Transforming the 'villain' from a white man into a biracial young woman is an incredibly powerful move that not only diversifies the show, but also makes it more mysterious.

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

If the two main characters are both white men, the viewer would be much more able to find a 'suspect'. But casting this extraordinarily cunning and talented character as a biracial twenty-something woman adds intrigue and suspense to the whodunit. And, within the plot's dark twists and turns, the underlying sense that the real villain could be anyone – including Collane herself, heightens the tension that is so carefully crafted throughout the series.

But that's not all.

The Stranger also implies a lesbian relationship between Chrissy and her co-conspirator, Ingrid. Living together in an apartment with one bed, their relationship is implied as opposed to directly explored. Portraying a complex female character who happens to be gay or bisexual, but for whom sexuality is not the main focus, positions feminist discourse as the foundation for the story.

And, like Killing Eve's Villanelle, The Stranger portrays Chrissy's queerness as an aspect of her character as opposed to a catalyst for angst or self-hatred due to internalised homophobia. Like Chrissy's sexuality, then, part of The Stranger's power lies in how it does not have to be about feminism to be feminist.

Of course, even without the gender swap, the series is undeniably feminist. Siobhan Finneran (Coronation Street) plays the role of Detective Sergeant Griffin, a woman whose love life is complex, whose female friendships are incredibly important, and whose job is her world.

Her friend's daughter, who works as a sugar baby (and prostitute) to earn money whilst studying at university is not demonised, but instead, is depicted as a young woman attempting to take control of her finances during the often unstable period of undergraduate life. Unwilling to fall into vacuous categories, the women portrayed in this series dodge classification just as the men, too, portray multiplicity.

Without representing this 'villainous' character as both biracial and queer, though, The Stranger would fall dangerously close to narratives that have previously dominated crime series both in fiction and on screen, in which two white men engage in some sort of fight for dominance.

Harlan Coben wanted to re-tell his story in a slightly different way for Netflix – so he created a series which did not 'keep slavishly devoted' to the book – and transforming Chris to Chrissy was an important part of that.

A re-imagination of this complex but thrilling narrative, the gender-swap and lesbian sub-plot is not only great for representation, but it is also a powerful way of making the whodunnit even more enthralling.

The Stranger is available now on Netflix.


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