Netflix's new Harlan Coban show is the streamer's best yet. It's deliciously watchable. Here's why you must binge the series.
Watching a Harlan Coben screen adaptation on Netflix can be a bit like chewing gum that loses its flavour quickly.
There have been hits, near misses and yawns over the past few years. But Run Away, released on 1 January, wipes the slate clean because it’s a great limited series and binge-worthy anytime.
Run Away, based on Coben’s 2019 book of the same name, starts by telling the story of the Greene family.
James Nesbitt plays dad Simon, and Minnie Driver plays mom Ingrid. Daughter Paige is an addict, missing, and moving in the wrong circles.
Simon is on a mission to find and save his daughter. But in between, plots and sub-plots unravel at the pace of fighter jets.
Simon sees Paige busking in a park; her boyfriend and dealer, Aaron, intercepts him; Paige bolts; and what follows is a brief, ugly scuffle that is filmed, edited, and released onto social media.
Within hours, he is being publicly framed as a violent man who beat a homeless person senseless.
Not long after, Aaron is found stabbed to death, and the story pivots as the desperate dad becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation. That’s the first part.
Framed as a violent man
Together with Driver, who should have had a far less subdued role in the film, the Greenes start investigating their daughter’s disappearance. The pair breaks a few rules along the way.
They meet Cornelius, a council flat neighbour of Paige and her boyfriend’s, who had been offering the young woman refuge from Aaron’s violence, and through him, Simon and Ingrid are drawn into the drug underworld to seek out information.
A basement shootout relegates Ingrid, aka Driver, to a hospital bed coma for much of the series.
Elena Ravenscroft is a private investigator hired by wealthy businessman Sebastian Thorpe to find his missing adopted son, Henry.
The police consider the case a low priority, but Elena digs into Henry’s digital trail and discovers that Paige was the last person to interact with him online before he vanished.
Two missing young people, previously unconnected, are suddenly orbiting the same centre of gravity, and Elena’s investigation slowly moves into Simon’s orbit.
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Watch the trailer
Now, add a Bonnie and Clyde-like young couple who are driving around the UK and killing people off a hit list.
Their handler is unknown for most of the season, and the killings feel annoyingly random. That is, until the many fragmented pieces of the narrative come together in a rather curiously shocking, but delectable truth.
Run Away is like a shattered vase. Getting through the plot is like an exercise in Kintsugi, but when it’s all pieced together, the reality of the story reveals itself like the beauty of an object that once was. Clues are breadcrumbed throughout to allow viewers to make their own conclusions and solve the layered mysteries.
What’s really interesting, and an aspect that I feel should have been delved into a bit more, is the cult. We see it, we experience some of it, and some of its motives are explained. But it never quite crosses the line to spell out the danger, origin, and depth of a central part of the narrative.
It could have been developed a bit more, because while there is context, there is no subtext that takes the story’s B-roll further in this instance. It’s a small niggle, but still, it’s a niggle.
A cult sews it together
The eight-part limited series is one of the better Netflix adaptations of Coben’s work. There have been some good ones and, equally, some just-okay attempts that can turn anyone off watching another book come to life for some time.
Missing You was good, Gone For Good was okay, so too was The Woods. Fool Me One and Stay Safe made for great watches. Not every Bona show is killer, but Nesbitt’s and company’s great performances, super non-linear storytelling, and a solid screenplay and direction set Run Away apart.
The show is presently ranked by Netflix as the top-streamed series in the country, and it’s easy to see why.
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