{"id":275530,"date":"2026-01-09T07:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/275530\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T07:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:11:13","slug":"every-harlan-coben-tv-series-rated-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/275530\/","title":{"rendered":"every Harlan Coben TV series rated \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American novelist Harlan Coben<\/a> is, by commercial fiction standards, one of the most successful writers working today. A No 1 New York Times<\/a> bestseller author, he writes pulpy thrillers of the type you buy at the airport, consume feverishly poolside and never take home.<\/p>\n

Coben has written 35 novels, and is 11 adaptations (eight of them English language) into a nine-year, 14-book adaptation deal with Netflix<\/a>. These series share a tone, style and even actors \u2013 in multiple shows, Spooks heart-throb Richard Armitage pops up like a bad penny.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s daughter is the scriptwriter for many of these adaptations, which suggests a disdain for realism runs in the family.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve grown accustomed to in recent years. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve watched them all. Here is my ranking.<\/p>\n

BadStay Close (2021, Netflix)<\/p>\n

What happens when you transplant an actor who played Hamlet in the West End into a Harlan Coben adaptation? Er … that\u2019s Cush Jumbo\u2019s dilemma in Stay Close, one of many set in the suburbia-gone-wrong oeuvre.<\/p>\n

Jumbo\u2019s Megan left behind a life as an exotic dancer \u2013 and her lover, Richard Armitage (of course) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 best new shows to stream in JanuaryOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

So far, so conventional \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

After a slow start this one really heats up. If you can hang on till episode eight, the twist is pretty good.<\/p>\n

Fool Me Once (Netflix, 2024)<\/p>\n

Protagonist Maya Stern is not one to be messed with \u2013 and if you weren\u2019t sure about that, why not read her nominatively deterministic name again.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That is, until her (dead) husband appears on the nanny-cam … and Maya\u2019s world is plunged into turmoil. Luckily for us, that means lots of screen time with dead hubby\u2019s mummy, a deliciously viperous Joanna Lumley. She plays the matriarch of a big pharmaceutical company which \u2013 guess what \u2013 is really shady. <\/p>\n

Run Away (2026, Netflix)<\/p>\n

Coben\u2019s latest thriller, a collaboration with his frequent co-writer Danny Brocklehurst, dropped on New Year\u2019s Day. It\u2019s almost as if the schedulers knew it would be the perfect accompaniment to a global, earth-shattering hangover.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Run Away star James Nesbitt: \u2018My Irishness has always been very important to me. I fought to play my roles as Irish\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Safe (2018, Netflix)<\/p>\n

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\u2019T secretly American.<\/p>\n

The plot hinges on a house party gone wrong, which sees two teenagers go missing \u2013 one of whom is the daughter of Hall\u2019s surgeon Tom. But … how could this have happened in a gated community, that should be so very \u201csafe\u201d? Turns out, bent coppers aren\u2019t just for Line of Duty.<\/p>\n

Rest assured, though \u2013 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\u2019d seen it all before in episode eight of my second watch.<\/p>\n

WorseThe Stranger (Netflix, 2020)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s often funny. For example, Jennifer Saunders plays a woman who is violently killed in her cake shop. As silly murders go, we\u2019re about a shaving of parmesan away from Martine McCutcheon\u2019s death by wheel of cheese in Midsomer Murders.<\/p>\n

Shelter (2023, Prime Video)<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever wondered what happens when you leave nothing on the cutting room floor, it\u2019s this. Shelter takes all the Coben classics \u2013 dead parents, missing children, mysterious abandoned houses, plot lines involving fire \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

This one is set in the US, and has more American pep in its step \u2013 plus what looks like a higher budget \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

The downside is the plot lines 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.<\/p>\n

Missing You (Netflix, 2025)<\/p>\n

Finally, a Coben adaptation that passes the Bechdel test! We\u2019ve got a female protagonist to root for \u2013 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?)<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Missing You review: another hard-nosed lady cop with a scorched-earth personal life from Harlan CobenOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 and the spooky cattle-prod wielder is none other than Steve Pemberton, star of the nightmarish Inside No.9. This can\u2019t be good.<\/p>\n

WorstLazarus (2025, Prime Video)<\/p>\n

If you remove the camp from Harlan Coben, Lazarus is what you get. Our brooding anti-hero, the hilariously named \u201cLaz\u201d, wanders around a city that looks like AI slop, trying to solve the mystery of his father\u2019s (Bill Nighy) suspicious death \u2013 and his sister\u2019s murder. Luckily, he starts seeing ghosts who can help him with that …<\/p>\n

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 \u201chorror-thriller,\u201d but despite the blood and guts \u2013 including ghosts axe-murdering each other \u2013 the most frightening thing about this show is Laz\u2019s sister\u2019s wig.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s musical-theatre-loving murder-nerds \u2013 surely the best thing about this entire canon.- Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American novelist Harlan Coben is, by commercial fiction standards, one of the most successful writers working today.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,62135,19,17,132405,127,139606],"class_list":{"0":"post-275530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-harlan-coben","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-james-nesbitt","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-richard-armitage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115863898322269702","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}