If you have read any of my reviews of Harlan Coben adaptations, you’ll know that I am a hater. I don’t have any personal issues with the dude as of yet, but the shows based on his work, and the fact that Netflix has been releasing one on New Year’s Day for the past two years, really grind my gears. I mean, the start of a new year isn’t anything special to me because it’s just another day. But there’s that saying, right? That you don’t understand the value of something until you have lost it. I took the date, January 1, for granted until Harlan Coben adaptations took it over. 2024 was tolerable because there was just one show. But 2025 was straight-up painful because there were four! And yes, I have watched all four of them. The worst part was that his shows were so popular that I began noticing other shows that had nothing to do with Coben emulating his storytelling structure and style of twists. Based on all this, you can understand the sheer horror I felt when I learned that the author and the streaming platform had sunk their fangs into 2026 as well with Run Away, without caring that it’d be overshadowed by the Stranger Things Season 5 finale. Is this one any different, or is it a case of more of the same? Let’s find out.
Nimer Rashed and Isher Sahota’s Run Away, adapted from Coben’s novel of the same name by Danny Brocklehurst, primarily tells the story of the Greenes, an affluent family comprising Simon, Ingrid, Sam, Anya, and Paige. They had an amicable relationship with each other, but Paige started to stray from the herd because of her relationship with Aaron and her dependence on hard drugs. And then one day, Paige just up and disappeared without leaving so much as a trace. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and eventually when Paige did show up in front of Simon in a public place, she ran away again, whilst screaming at her own father to leave her alone. To make things worse, Aaron tried to prevent Simon from pursuing Paige, and the public spat was recorded by those around them, thereby causing a dent in the Greenes’ reputation. When Simon and Ingrid tried to look for Paige in the shady locality that she lived in, Ingrid got shot and had to be hospitalized. Later on, Aaron’s body was found in his flat, butchered and bloody. Detectives Isaac and Ruby were assigned to look into this whole case, and of course they believed that Simon was the perpetrator. Seemingly unrelated to all this, Elena was investigating the disappearance of a kid named Henry while also dealing with some personal issues from her marital life. And then there were Dee Dee and Ash, two contract killers who were having a gala time going around the country and murdering people. How do these plot threads come together? Well, that’s what forms the crux of the narrative.
Like every other Harlan Coben story, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Run Away had a bunch of plot threads running parallel to each other. But this time I was prepared to “trust the process” and let them connect in the penultimate and final episodes in a “meaningful way.” This was made easier by Brocklehurst’s writing, because every single subplot felt like it was brimming with substance and conflict. In the hands of incompetent writers, Isaac and Ruby would have dragged the whole thing to a halt. However, their secret office romance, the backgrounds that they came from, and their personal quirks made their scenes so interesting. The same could be said about Dee Dee and Ash. Sure, they were integrated into the main plot pretty forcefully, but by that time, I wanted them around, which meant that they had been fleshed out enough to affect the lives of the primary characters. Elena could have become the comic relief, with a jarring turn into melodramatic territory, but the shift in the tone of her character arc was done really subtly. And, without giving everything away, since the A-plot was dedicated to critiquing cults and godmen, two things that I absolutely detest, I was hooked. For a change, the dialogue-writing was extremely good, and even the ending was thought-provoking. There were a bunch of plot holes here and there, but I am willing to give them a pass so that future Coben adaptations treat this as the benchmark.
Even though Coben’s works are adapted by different directors and teams, they always seem to be very dull. The pacing, the music, the character designs, the cinematography, the editing—they’re always so lackluster. It’s as if the showrunners feel that Coben’s writing is impactful enough that they don’t need to exploit the perks that come with this audio-visual medium. Nimer Rashed and Isher Sahota have been guilty of doing this in the past, but something has clearly changed this time around. The pacing is decent. I mean, at least I didn’t have to keep glancing at my watch. The character designs told a story of their own, especially when it came to Elena. I need that yellow windbreaker as soon as possible. Run Away had a distinct look to it as well, with proper color grading and color correction. The production design and set design in some of the scenes—off the top of my head, Rocco’s house comes to mind—did such a brilliant job of underscoring the personality of the characters in question. However, most importantly, I think Rashed and Sahota have absolutely knocked it out of the park whilst extracting incredible performances from their cast. If they would have failed at this task, I probably would have assumed that actors were cursed to deliver bad performances if they signed on to a Coben project.
James Nesbitt was genuinely excellent. It seemed like he was aiming for an Emmy win. Ruth Jones was so heartwarming that I wanted an Elena spin-off. Alfred Enoch was so suave; in a just world, he would have been the next James Bond. Amy Gledhill was splendid, and her chemistry with Enoch was scintillating. Lucian Msamati injected the show with his signature brand of stoicism. Jon Pointing and Maeve Courtier-Lilley as yet another iteration of a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde were really entertaining to watch. Ellie de Lange, despite not having a lot of screentime, expertly expressed everything that her character had been through. The rest of the supporting cast were fantastic. Minnie Driver was criminally underused, though. I don’t know what happened there. Didn’t she read her contract? I mean, she’s one of the most recognizable actors from the ‘90s, and that’s all that she gets to do? Criminal. With all that said, I will admit that this is the first Harlan Coben adaptation that I actually liked watching. Every other time, I was bored and inches away from punching a hole in my laptop. The fact that this show didn’t make me violent means that, with this new year, the tides are changing in Coben’s favor. I won’t start feeling too hopeful yet because there’s a pretty decent chance that the next adaptation of one of his novels will be a stinker. Until then, feel free to check out Run Away.
