Fool Me Once on Netflix is a twisty-turny thriller based on Harlan Coben’s gripping novel of the same name — and if episode one is anything to go by, we are in for a real treat.
The drama stars Our Girl and Coronation Street favourite Michelle Keegan as Maya, a widow who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband, Joe, played by Richard Armitage.
Here is everything you need to know about what happened in Fool Me Once episode 1...
The first episode opens with a group of teenage boys wearing school uniforms and strange masks doing some sort of odd ritual dance around a young boy who is tied up to a chair. We know that what is happening on screen happened back in 1996, but that is all we learn before time jumps to the modern day at a funeral that is taking place in the grounds of a very large house.
As everyone stands around a grave, Maya is quietly crying while holding the hand of her three-year-old daughter, Lily, clearly struggling at the funeral of her husband, Joe.
As the service continues, Maya has flashbacks to the time she and Joe met at a charity gala, and then to their wedding, where they both look the picture of happiness. But soon things take a dark turn when Maya's next memory is that of Joe being shot in the chest at night as she screams for help as he dies in her arms.
There is clearly tension between Maya and her mother-in-law, Judith, played by Joanna Lumley, who is very rich and although grieving for her son, still maintaining an air of superiority over everyone at the funeral, including Maya.
After the funeral, Maya goes home with Lily and her friend, who surprises her by giving her a nanny cam - a hidden camera in a digital photo frame. At first, Maya dismisses the idea of spaying on her nanny, Isabella, but we then see her checking the camera footage shortly after Joe's death and her blood runs cold when she sees what looks like Joe on the video, with his back to the camera and hugging their daughter in the playroom in their house.
Maya is stunned and frantically asks Lily if she saw her daddy in the house the previous day, but she says no. However, Maya isn't convinced and goes to check her late husband's wardrobe where she finds the shoes and the green shirt that he was wearing in the video are missing.
Knowing she needs answers, Maya grills Isabella as soon as she arrives at work for the day, and Isabella seems shocked that Maya has been spying on her, and confused when Maya shows her the footage of Joe, claiming she doesn't understand what Maya is implying and leaving Maya angry.
However, there is a shock twist when Isabella suddenly sprays pepper spray in Maya's eyes and runs away, taking the SD card from the computer with her.
Shortly after the pepper spray incident Detective Sergeant Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar) comes to Maya's house to ask her more questions about the night Joe was killed and he's shocked to see Maya with sore eyes after Isabella's attack.
But when Maya goes to show him the footage of Joe on the nanny cam and it is missing, it is clear he doesn't believe her and thinks grief is making her see things that aren't there.
Once again, Maya goes over what happened the night Joe was shot and Sami asks to see the guns that she keeps in the house. Being ex-military (something we know because Maya keeps having flashbacks to a harrowing time she had in combat, clearly struggling with PTSD) Maya has a collection of registered guns which she keeps in a locked cabinet in her house that can only be opened with her or Joe's thumbprint.
However, Sami notices a gun in a display cabinet that is legally registered as deactivated and not loaded... soon he realizes it is the same type of gun that was used in Joe's shooting and he takes it in as evidence.
But it seems that Detective Sami Kierce is also hiding something because, on the way back to the police station, he blacks out in his car and crashes into someone's fence. He then texts a mystery person to that that 'it's happened again' suggesting this isn't the first time he has had this problem. His boss at work isn't happy about what has happened and assigns him a work partner, a youngster from work called Marty McGreggor.
Later, Maya is driving to see her brother-in-law, Eddie, when she thinks she is being followed by a red car. She gets the number plate and later asks her friend from work, Shane, to find out who owns the car.
However, when she gets to Eddie's it is clear that there is tension between them as he struggles in the wake of his wife Claire's death, who was Maya's sister. Claire was also murdered and has not only left behind a husband but also two teenage children.
After going to Farnwood, Joe's family's huge estate, Maya tries to track down Isabella and get the SD card back, but she hides from her and won't answer the door. Later, may finally finds her, but Isabella races away from her in the car, leading to a dangerous car chase that leads to some woods where Isabella gets out of her car and escapes on foot, clearly not wanting to face Maya.
Following her chase with Isabella, Maya goes back to confront Judith and tells her that she saw Joe on her nanny cam, which Judith instantly dismisses.
As Maya gets home, she finds Sami and Marty on her doorstep and they reveal that they have done a ballistics test, which has shown that the same gun that was used to kill Joe was also used to kill her sister, Claire.
As Maya reels, the episode ends with Judith looking at Joe's freshly dug grave, but next to him is an older grave for someone called Andrew Burkett, and as the episode flashes back to the strange 1996 ritual dance with the schoolboys, it suggests that the person tied up in the chair could have been connected to Joe's younger brother.
Meanwhile, Isabella is seen deleting the footage of what Maya thought to be Joe on the nanny cam. But was it Joe? And what is Isabella hiding?
All 8 episodes of Fool Me Once are now available to stream as a box set on Netflix.
