It wouldn’t be the New Year if we didn’t have a new Netflix Harlan Coben mini-series to alternately thrill and frustrate us, or at least make us not feel guilty about turning our brains off for a few hours to start the year. The best of these escapist thrillers move so quickly that they stay ahead of issues with plot holes, continuity, logic, and recognizable human behavior. “Run Away,” based on the mass market paperback king’s novel, starts with a bang, keeping things moving just enough for all of those issues to stay far enough away. The bad news is that those issues quickly catch up, as “Run Away” devolves into such a ludicrous assemblage of coincidences and nonsensical plot twists that only the most hardcore Harlanheads will be able to run with it.
Simon Greene (a truly series-salvaging James Nesbitt) has been living in a state of heartbreak after his drug-addicted daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) ran away from home. He’s been secretly trying to find her, despite his wife’s (Minnie Driver, utterly wasted) protestations that Paige needs to grow up and get clean on her own. When he receives a text from someone who claims to know that Paige will be busking in the park that day, he races to find her. She looks strung out and scared, which sends Simon into protective mode, leading to an assault on Paige’s boyfriend, which is caught by nearby phone carriers who quickly make Simon viral for beating up a homeless guy. And then Paige’s boyfriend ends up brutally murdered. Paige is still missing. Did she do it? Did Simon do it? Is Paige still in danger? The twist sends Simon into drug dens and other dark corners of society to find his daughter or at least find out what happened to her.
While Simon’s journey unfolds, “Run Away” also introduces us to the major players that anyone who has ever seen a mini-series knows will collide by the series finale. There are cops very loosely investigating the murder, led by the charismatic Alfred Enoch as Isaac Fagbenle, a guy who doesn’t seem to trust Simon but keeps giving him enough space to do dumber and dumber things. There’s a private detective with her own woefully overwritten personal problems named Elena Ravenscroft (Ruth Jones), who takes an assignment to find another missing child and crosses paths with Simon on the investigation. Finally, there are two poorly-cast assassins named Ash (Jon Pointing) and Dee-Dee (Maeve Courtier-Lilley), who seem to be going down a list of ordinary-seeming people to kill. Did they whack Paige’s boyfriend? Why? And how are they all connected to a mysterious cult that seems to be at the center of all of this?
Yes, I said “mysterious cult.” What starts as a relatable story of a troubled father trying to save his lost daughter—an arc that anyone who saw his excellent work in “The Missing” knows that Nesbitt has the dramatic chops to nail—gets more and more ludicrous as Coben piles on the subplots, revelations, and twists. His writing works well in the tight chapter structure of a book you buy at the airport, where every chapter ends with a new gotcha moment. When all of those moments are piled up into a mini-series, it doesn’t have the same impact, especially as performers get lost in the chaos of it all. Nesbitt tries his best to carve out a real person, and mostly succeeds, but no one else here is particularly good, even if I would watch Enoch in a better procedural series. Driver is egregiously utilized, shot in an early scene, and stuck in a hospital bed for almost the entire series.
Everyone has their own personal “Coben Meter,” the place where the plot holes and inconsistencies push a bit too far. For those still nursing holiday hangovers, the hull may hold through the eight episodes of this admittedly never-boring thriller. Others may find themselves hoping that next year’s Coben anchors itself just a bit more slightly to things like logic and reality.
Whole series screened for review. Premieres on Netflix on January 1, 2026.
