Title: Harlan Coben’s Run Away (2026)
Where to Watch: Netflix
Episodes: 8
Rating: 6/10 gasps😨 I let out alone in my apartment
IT WAS JANUARY. The post-holiday bloat was real, the river of excuses for inbox avoidance had run dry, and then Netflix, like clockwork, drops another Harlan Coben thriller directly into your lap like a cat presenting a dead bird. “This is a gift for the house,” the algorithm seemed to say.
This year’s offering is Run Away, and I regret to inform you (and myself) that I watched the entire thing (>6 hours runtime) in about a day and a half.
I don’t know if this show is good. I genuinely cannot tell you. What I can tell you is that it was #1 on Netflix for weeks. I texted “WHAT” to my group chat at least four times, and I now have strong opinions about a fictional cult called “The Shining Truth.”
Yes, the name of the secretive cult with its British countryside manor headquarters is The Shining Truth. There were choices to make here, and that was certainly of them.
The Setup—It’s Always the Setup (spoilers abound)
The premise of Run Away is the Platonic form of Coben-ism: A rich British dad named Simon (James Nesbitt, giving it his all) has a drug-addicted daughter named Paige who ran away from home. One day he finds her in a park, strung out and performing sad acoustic covers for change. He tries to bring her home.
Her sketchy boyfriend, Aaron, gets involved. Simon punches Aaron in the face. Someone films it. It goes viral.
And then Aaron turns up dead.
If you’ve seen literally any other Harlan Coben show, you know exactly what happens next: Everyone has secrets, nothing is what it seems, and there are approximately 47 subplots that will somehow connect in episode 7.
The Good
James Nesbitt is doing WORK. The man is emoting. He’s crying. He’s storming into places demanding answers. He’s giving you “divorced dad meets action hero” energy and…honestly…it’s giving. This man needs a hug.
There’s also a PI named Elena Ravenscroft (Ruth Jones) who’s investigating a completely separate missing person case that..surprise! is definitely connected. She’s the most competent person in this entire show, which of course means she gets killed right when she figures everything out. Classic Coben! Can’t really get started on Ravenscroft as a last name for a PI in a procedural, but, again, another choice.
The two detectives, Fagbenle and Todd, and I mean no disrespect to the British subculture, but when they introduced Dean Thomas in Harry Potter (Alfred Enoch) as Detective Fagbenle (yes pronounced just as you would think) I screamed. They have a sort of banter. They sometimes roll their eyes. They’re the closest thing to normal people in this entire unhinged narrative.
The Absolutely Unhinged
Where to begin?
There’s a murder couple. Like Bonnie & Clyde with a Natural Born Killers vibe, but British and somehow involved with the cult. Dee Dee and Ash grew up in foster care together, and now they just drive around killing people for “The Shining Truth.” The show wants you to find them “charismatic” and “darkly compelling,” but I found them wildly irritating. Why are they like this? The cult? Trauma? Unclear.
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Speaking of the cult: The leader, Caspar (which is a very chill name for a cult leader), spent decades impregnating women, taking their babies, telling the moms the babies died, and then putting the kids up for adoption. Now he’s dying and has hired the murder couple to kill all his secret sons so none of them inherit the cult.
I’m sorry, I just need you to read that again.
He hired assassins to kill his own biological children because he didn’t want them to inherit his cult.
And that’s not even the wildest twist.
The Twist That Made Me Yell
Simon’s wife Ingrid is played by Minnie Driver! You may have missed that because Minnie Driver is in this show for about as long at it takes to make a plate of scrambled eggs. She spends approximately 90% of the runtime in a hospital bed, or in the same flashback of Simon and her dancing in their kitchen that plays over… and over… and over again. Did they not have time to shoot any other flashbacks? It seems not.
She gets shot in episode 2 and is in a coma until basically the finale. Minnie Driver! In a coma! For seven episodes! If that doesn’t scream “The good news is we got Minnie Driver, the bad news is we have her for about two hours” nothing does.
Anyway.
EXTRA SPOILER TERRITORY
Turns out that Ingrid killed Aaron. Not Simon. Not the murder couple. Ingrid. Minnie Driver!
She knew the whole time. She knew where Paige was. She knew what happened. And then—for reasons that still don’t entirely make sense—she went WITH Simon to search for Paige anyway, ended up in a drug dealer’s basement, and got herself shot.
Minnie. Sweetie. You could have just... told him she was safe? Instead of busting into a crime scene to keep up a lie you already committed a murder over??
But wait! There’s more!
Aaron wasn’t actually Paige’s boyfriend. He was her half-brother. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, Ingrid was ALSO in The Shining Truth cult decades ago. Caspar got her pregnant. He told her the baby died. The baby was Aaron.
So Ingrid killed her own son. To protect her daughter. Who was “dating” her son. Who was actually her brother.
Simon and Paige decide not to tell Ingrid any of this.
The end.
The Stuff That Made No Sense
The police never thought to check local rehabs for Paige? She was right there the whole time? Ingrid knows where Paige is and who killed Aaron. Why does she take Simon to a drug dealer’s basement and get herself shot AGAIN?
What happened to Henry?? (Apparently this is addressed in one throwaway line in episode 7 but I definitely missed it.)
Why cast Minnie Driver if you’re going to keep her unconscious for the entire show?
The Verdict
Run Away is not a good show in any traditional sense. The plot has holes you could twist an ankle in. The final twist genuinely feels like someone lost a bet. And yet.
And YET.
I enjoyed it. I watched all eight episodes. I cared about what happened. I gasped at least twice. I am now emotionally invested in the fictional trauma of a British financier and his extremely complicated family.
Is that not the point?
Harlan Coben isn’t making prestige TV. He’s making airport novels for your screen, the kind of thing where every chapter ends on a cliffhanger and you keep saying “one more episode” until it’s 2 am and you have to work tomorrow.
Run Away delivers exactly what it promises: a mystery that moves too fast for you to notice it doesn’t entirely make sense, and a twist so absurd you’ll be thinking about it for days.
I would absolutely recommend it.
— Tara
Tara Ruff is an Emmy-winning journalist and founder of Purpose Public Relations. She writes stories for a living — and about them for fun.
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