Created by Danish filmmaker and actress Ingeborg Topsøe, Netflix’s Secrets We Keep (originally titled Reservatet) is a splashy and entertaining, yet gripping and relevant whodunit miniseries about tensions and suspicions between the haves and the have-nots. It’s hard to imagine it won’t find an audience, as Secrets We Keep explores similar thematic territory to this year’s most zeitgeisty hits Adolescence and The White Lotus, and in some ways handles its dark material even better. You can watch this remarkably efficient thriller from start to finish in just over three hours, and you should.

What Is ‘Secrets We Keep’ About?

Secrets We Keep takes place in an affluent, socially interconnected suburb of Copenhagen, where Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen) becomes disturbed and obsessed by the sudden disappearance of Ruby (Donna Levkoski), the au pair to her rather mega-wealthy neighbors and friends, Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) and his wife Katarina (Danica Ćurčić). The morning after expressing unhappiness and even fear regarding her employers to a mostly unresponsive Cecilie, Ruby vanishes under highly mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her passport, cash, and basically every other thing someone intentionally departing wouldn’t leave behind. Cecilie becomes the case’s most dedicated (if unauthorized and unofficial) investigator, eventually working in tandem with local cop Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore).

Everyone is a suspect, and everyone is suspicious. The fishiest of the people in Cecilie’s orbit are Rasmus and Katarina themselves, a charismatic but smarmy and selfish pair who couldn’t seem less interested in figuring out why a young woman in their employ has seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth. They’re socially intertwined with Cecilie and her husband Mike (Simon Sears), as Mike is industrialist Rasmus’s lawyer. Ruby’s proximity to the pair’s teen son Oscar (Frode Bilde Rønsholt) raises plenty of red flags in the investigation, and it doesn’t help matters in that the boy is obviously unwell and misanthropic in a zoned-out, chronically online sort of way. Oscar’s best friend is Cecilie’s son Viggo (Lukas Zuperka), though it would appear that the relationship is fraying. Suspicion even forms around Cecilie’s au pair, Angel (Excel Busano), who, like Ruby, is also temporarily on a working permit from the Philippines, and very much at the mercy of her employer in a one-sided arrangement.

‘Secrets We Keep’ Doesn’t Waste Any of Your Time

It isn’t a spoiler to say that, since there are such young boys in the picture, the series explores uncomfortable, timely material similar to Netflix’s breakout hit Adolescence from earlier this year. There is also very much a blunt exploration of the disparities between the hyper-rich and the disenfranchised that evokes The White Lotus, though it’s presented here without the filter of satire or really much humor of any kind.

There’s something to be said for a smart show that balances pure entertainment with a dash of social commentary, presenting it all with a straight face. The whodunit elements here are functional, not particularly unpredictable but serviceable. Secrets We Keep sets out to be a blend of thriller and drama, pulp and light social observation. It’s an easily digestible balance of all of these. The result is an intelligent, engaging, and even darkly fun miniseries. Secrets We Keep isn’t quite as weighty or searing as Adolescence, but it does finish much stronger than both that series and the much-talked-about Season 3 of The White Lotus. Some viewers are likely to take issue with Secrets We Keep‘s unresolved plot threads and unanswered questions, but all of this is by design — and part of the point. It’s a consistently watchable series that earns bonus points for not wasting your time.

Strong performances all around are crucial to how well Secrets We Keep works. Most notably, Hansen presents a gripping, sturdily principled yet hardly perfect or entirely altruistic protagonist, and the child performances are appropriately unsettling. It’s Serbian-Danish performer Ćurčić, however, who previously appeared in Netflix series The Chestnut Man and Equinox, who steals scenes. Katarina is endlessly self-serving, even scarily so. She’s a pretty nasty and highly suspicious person — but recognizably human, magnetic, even appealing.

Like every good piece of crime fiction, Secrets We Keep is likely to have you questioning just how you might play into all of this if you were hypothetically thrust into similar circumstances — but that’s part of what’s so great about this genre when it’s done well, and one of the many great things about this highly-bingeable noir miniseries.

Secrets We Keep is now streaming on Netflix.