TL;DR: Run Away is a slick, satisfying Harlan Coben adaptation elevated by strong performances from James Nesbitt, Tracy-Ann Oberman, and Ruth Jones. It’s familiar, twisty comfort TV done with enough craft and care to make it deeply bingeable, even if it never strays far from the genre’s well-worn paths.
Run Away
I sometimes feel like I can measure the passage of time not by seasons, birthdays, or the slow decay of my knees, but by how often Netflix drops a new Harlan Coben adaptation into my lap. Blink and there’s another one. Sneeze and James Nesbitt is once again staring into the middle distance, haunted by secrets, bad decisions, and at least one crime he definitely didn’t commit but is absolutely going to be framed for anyway. And you know what? I keep watching. Every single time.
That’s the strange, comforting magic of Coben TV. These shows are not trying to reinvent the medium. They’re not here to challenge your soul or dismantle capitalism. They exist to wrap you in a familiar narrative blanket, whisper “just one more episode” into your ear, and gently escort you into a world where every missing person has a secret Instagram account and every apparently minor character will absolutely murder someone by episode six.
Run Away is exactly that kind of comfort TV, but crucially, it’s comfort TV done really, really well. This is one of the stronger entries in the ever-expanding Coben Cinematic Television Universe, a return to form that reminds you why these adaptations keep getting greenlit at an alarming rate. Solid craftsmanship, compulsive plotting, and performances that elevate material which, on paper, could very easily collapse under the weight of its own coincidences.
At the centre of it all is James Nesbitt, playing Simon, a man whose life has been hollowed out by his daughter Paige’s descent into drug addiction and her subsequent disappearance. This is not a new role for Nesbitt. He has made a career out of playing wounded, morally upright men slowly crushed by forces beyond their control. And yet, like a favourite song you’ve heard a hundred times, it still works. He brings a twitchy, lived-in authenticity to Simon that makes the character’s increasingly questionable decisions feel painfully understandable rather than narratively convenient.
Simon is a father who refuses to accept the official advice that his daughter must hit rock bottom before she can be helped. That tension, between institutional detachment and parental desperation, is the emotional engine driving Run Away forward. It’s also where the show is at its most effective. This isn’t a glossy crime thriller about clever people doing clever things. It’s about panic. It’s about fear. It’s about what happens when love becomes reckless.
Opposite Nesbitt is Minnie Driver as Ingrid, Simon’s wife, whose role initially seems poised to be the emotional counterweight to his obsession. Unfortunately, the series sidelines her far too quickly, parking Ingrid in a hospital bed and saddling her with dialogue so aggressively generic it feels like it wandered in from a rejected Casualty script. Driver does what she can, because she’s a pro, but it’s hard not to feel the show wasted an opportunity to explore the parental divide more deeply.
Where Run Away really starts to sing is in its supporting cast. Tracy-Ann Oberman is an absolute delight as Jessica, Simon’s lawyer, a woman who radiates competence, menace, and barely concealed contempt for anyone who dares waste her time. Every scene she shares with Nesbitt crackles. She’s the kind of character who feels like she walked in from a better show and decided to stay.
Then there’s Ruth Jones as private investigator Elena Ravenscroft, an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Jones plays Elena with a beautifully controlled stillness that makes her quietly unnerving. She listens more than she speaks. She watches everything. And because this is a Harlan Coben story, the moment she’s hired to find a missing adoptive son named Henry, you can practically hear the narrative gears clicking into place.
The plot itself is gloriously, unapologetically convoluted. Simon gets a tip that Paige is busking in a park. He finds her. She runs away. Her boyfriend and dealer Aaron, played with impressive immediate loathsomeness by Thomas Flynn, intervenes. A fight breaks out. A selectively edited video goes viral, painting Simon as a violent monster. Shortly after, Aaron is found stabbed to death. Congratulations, Simon, you are now the prime suspect in a murder you didn’t commit, but absolutely look guilty of.
From there, the show spirals outward in classic Coben fashion. Crime scenes are broken into. Old acquaintances resurface. Kind strangers like Cornelius, played with warmth and quiet gravity by Lucian Msamati, turn out to be deeply entangled in the mess. There’s a basement shootout, because of course there is. Every episode introduces at least two new complications and ends on a twist engineered specifically to stop you from turning the TV off and going to bed like a responsible adult.
And because this is comfort TV, there is always a “meanwhile.” Actually, there are several. Elena’s investigation into Henry’s disappearance begins intersecting with Simon’s search in ways that are both predictable and satisfying. Elsewhere, a chillingly calm pair of young killers roam around executing people on behalf of a shadowy third party, with Maeve Courtier-Lilley delivering a quietly mesmerising performance as the more unsettling half of the duo. Her repeated insistence that each killing must be “different” is the kind of small character detail that sticks in your brain long after the credits roll.
What makes Run Away work, despite all the familiar tropes, is its pacing. The twists don’t feel dumped on you. They’re fed at a steady, confident rhythm that understands exactly how much narrative sugar the audience can handle before becoming numb. Each episode rewards your attention with just enough information to feel clever, while withholding enough to keep you guessing.
Is it groundbreaking? No. Does it sometimes lean too hard on coincidence and convenience? Absolutely. But there’s a craft to making something this watchable without it collapsing into parody. The writing team, led by frequent Coben collaborator Danny Brocklehurst, understands the genre’s limitations and works smartly within them.
There’s also something oddly reassuring about the moral clarity of these shows. The world of Run Away is cruel and dangerous, but it’s not cynical. Parents love their children. People make terrible mistakes for understandable reasons. The truth, however buried, always matters. In an age of prestige TV that often mistakes bleakness for depth, there’s value in a thriller that simply wants to tell a compelling story and land it cleanly.
By the time the final twists fall into place, you’re not necessarily shocked, but you are satisfied. The mysteries resolve. The emotional arcs close. The narrative circle completes itself with the reassuring click of a well-made puzzle box snapping shut. And as the credits roll, you realise something important. You enjoyed yourself. Deeply. Comfortably. Without irony.
Run Away is not trying to be the best show on television. It’s trying to be the show you put on when you want to disappear for eight hours and come back feeling entertained rather than exhausted. In that sense, it succeeds completely. This is Harlan Coben comfort TV at its finest, expertly assembled, confidently performed, and engineered to keep you watching long past the point you meant to stop.
