The American novelist Harlan Coben is, by commercial fiction standards, one of the most successful writers working today. A No 1 New York Times bestseller author, he writes pulpy thrillers of the type you buy at the airport, consume feverishly poolside, and never take home.
Coben has written 35 novels, and is 11 adaptations (eight of them English language) into a nine-year, 14-book adaptation deal with Netflix. These series share a tone, style, and even actors – in multiple shows, Spooks heart-throb Richard Armitage pops up like a bad penny.
But despite their mass-market appeal, the adaptations are widely regarded as some of the worst telly around. They tend to be set in English suburbia, and usually involve a mysterious crime being ineptly investigated by a corrupt police force. Coben’s daughter is the scriptwriter for many of these adaptations, which suggests a disdain for realism runs in the family.
And yet, I have a soft spot for these woeful shows. While the plots are often ludicrous twist-packed affairs, they provide a high camp, silly alternative to the pompous prestige TV we’ve grown accustomed to in recent years. Despite the heinous events going on – murders, domestic violence, people getting sex trafficked – the scariest thing in the world of a Harlan Coben adaptation is the acting.
To me, that’s comforting. So if you find yourself at home on one of January’s many interminably cold evenings, longing for a piece of low art – a script that makes no sense, and acting that they would never teach at drama school – then look no further than one of the many Harlan Coben adaptations available on all good streaming services. They’re all bad – but some are worse than others.
And I’ve watched them all.
Here is my ranking.
Bad
Stay Close (2021, Netflix)
What happens when you transplant an actor who played Hamlet in the West End into a Harlan Coben adaptation? Er … that’s Cush Jumbo’s dilemma in Stay Close, one of many set in the suburbia-gone-wrong oeuvre.
Jumbo’s Megan left behind a life as an exotic dancer – and her lover, Richard Armitage (of course) – one mysterious night nearly 20 years ago to start a new life with a big house, three kids and a sensible brown bob. But it all comes crashing down when her past starts to rear its ugly head.
So far, so conventional – bar two villainous assassins who look like CBeebies presenters and perform a synchronised dance to Creep by Radiohead (really) before murdering their victim with a pneumatic drill.
After a slow start this one really heats up. If you can hang on till episode eight, the twist is pretty good.
Fool Me Once (2024, Netflix)
Protagonist Maya Stern is not one to be messed with – and if you weren’t sure about that, why not read her nominatively deterministic name again.
Stern by name, stern by nature, Maya (Michelle Keegan) is a former fighter pilot with a troubled past, dealing with the two recent tragic murders of her husband and sister.
That is, until her (dead) husband appears on the nanny-cam … and Maya’s world is plunged into turmoil. Luckily for us, that means lots of screen time with dead hubby’s mummy, a deliciously viperous Joanna Lumley. She plays the matriarch of a big pharmaceutical company which – guess what – is really shady.
Run Away (2026, Netflix)
Coben’s latest thriller, a collaboration with his frequent co-writer Danny Brocklehurst, dropped on New Year’s Day. It’s almost as if the schedulers knew it would be the perfect accompaniment to a global, earth-shattering hangover.
This is classic Coben fare, televisual comfort food of the highest order: think missing daughters, private investigators, and more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. But a decent cast, including Minnie Driver, James Nesbitt and Ruth Jones, elevates it above some other offerings.
Safe (2018, Netflix)
Dexter actor Michael C Hall delivers one of the worst accents of modern times in this twisty tale, playing a normal British dad who DEFINITELY ISN’T secretly American.
The plot hinges on a house party gone wrong, which sees two teenagers go missing – one of whom is the daughter of Hall’s surgeon Tom. But … how could this have happened in a gated community, that should be so very “safe”? Turns out, bent coppers aren’t just for Line of Duty.
Rest assured, though – this is far from prestige TV. The plot is so forgettable, I watched this when it came out, forgot all about it, and only realised I’d seen it all before in episode eight of my second watch.
Worse
The Stranger (2020, Netflix)
Coben told The Observer in 2022 that he wrote the book The Stranger in three weeks while travelling in the back of an Uber. Perhaps this explains the gaping plot holes.
A young woman wearing a baseball cap exposes life-altering secrets to unsuspecting people, resulting in cast members going missing and getting murdered. It should be scary, but it’s often funny. For example, Jennifer Saunders plays a woman who is violently killed in her cake shop. As silly murders go, we’re about a shaving of parmesan away from Martine McCutcheon’s death by wheel of cheese in Midsomer Murders.
Shelter (2023, Prime Video)
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you leave nothing on the cutting room floor, it’s this. Shelter takes all the Coben classics – dead parents, missing children, mysterious abandoned houses, plotlines involving fire – and adds in high school politics, basketball, two queer storylines, a network of underground tunnels, a sex trafficking ring, and … the Holocaust. Yes, you did read that right.
This one is set in the US, and has more American pep in its step – plus what looks like a higher budget – than some of the other adaptations. The plus points: the teens give committed performances, and there are some funny lines as they go about solving the ever-more-nonsensical mystery together.
The downside is the plotlines are so various and tangential they gave me whiplash. Just when I thought nothing more could possibly happen, I realised I was only on episode five of eight.
Missing You (2025, Netflix)
Finally, a Coben adaptation that passes the Bechdel test! We’ve got a female protagonist to root for – Detective Kat Donovan is a ball-busting, fearless DCI who is … oh no … completely and utterly obsessed with men: her ex, who disappeared 11 years ago (or did he?), and solving the cold case murder of her father, who was the perfect police officer (or was he?)
These strings come together in one of the duller Cobens until, a few episodes in, we hit full on twisted British horror. On a farm in the deepest countryside, naked people are being tortured in a barnyard – and the spooky cattle-prod wielder is none other than Steve Pemberton, star of the nightmarish Inside No.9. This can’t be good.
Worst
Lazarus (2025, Prime Video)
If you remove the camp from Harlan Coben, Lazarus is what you get. Our brooding antihero, the hilariously named “Laz”, wanders around a city that looks like AI slop, trying to solve the mystery of his father’s (Bill Nighy) suspicious death – and his sister’s murder. Luckily, he starts seeing ghosts who can help him with that …
I wish I could say this was better. But the script, the acting, the pacing, is all absolutely dreadful. The more nonsensical episodes I watched, the more confused and distressed I became. Lazarus is marketed as a “horror-thriller,” but despite the blood and guts – including ghosts axe-murdering each other – the most frightening thing about this show is Laz’s sister’s wig.
This is the first Coben not based on one of his books, and it shows. The script has none of the high camp flourishes that make eight hours spent in a stupor worth it. Bring back Stay Close’s musical-theatre-loving murder-nerds – surely the best thing about this entire canon.
