James Nesbitt To Lead Harlan Coben’s Next Netflix Thriller

Is Harlan Coben the most prolific crime writer in TV right now? At the very least, he’s the highest profile. While Prime Video is cooking up a Sam Claflin-led original series from Coben’s mind, the people at Netflix are working on their third consecutive adaptation of a Coben novel, slated to land on New Year’s Day once more. Here’s everything we know so far about Run Away – plus the big names set to star.

Harlan Coben’s Run Away: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

On 1 January 2024, we had Fool Me Once, and with the turn of the New Year into 2025, we were gifted Missing You. So what’s in store for 1 January 2026? Based on Coben’s award-winning 2019 novel of the same name, Run Away is probably the grittiest addition to Netflix’s Coben canon, and production is set to commence in Manchester this month.

James Nesbitt as Calligan on set for Missing You. (Thomas Wood/Netflix © 2024)

What Is Run Away About?

Run Away centres on Simon (James Nesbitt), a man with a perfect life: he’s got a loving wife, great kids, a fulfilling job and a beautiful home. But it all starts to crumble when his eldest daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) runs away. Desperate to bring her home, Simon eventually finds her in a park, playing the guitar and evidently high on drugs. This is his opportunity to bring her home – until she runs away from him once more.

Refusing to let her go, Simon follows Paige into a dangerous underworld, where a quickly-escalating argument will shatter everything he knows about himself, and revealing deep secrets that could tear his family apart forever.

‘Run Away is about family – about what we will do to keep our family intact, what secrets we keep within our family, and what secrets we keep as a family,’ Coban tells Netflix. ‘Every time you walk past the house, there’s a whole universe that goes on behind that door and none of us have a clue what it is.’

The Cast

The cast details are in – and Coben is calling the star-studded roster ‘an embarrassment of riches’ and ‘unbelievable’. See for yourself below.

• James Nesbitt as Simon Greene
• Ruth Jones as Elena Ravenscroft
• Minnie Driver as Ingrid Greene
• Alfred Enoch as Isaac Fagbenle
• Lucian Msamati as Cornelius Faber
• Jon Pointing as Ash
• Ellie de Lange as Paige Greene
• Adrian Greensmith as Sam Greene
• Ellie Henry as Anya Greene
• Tracy-Ann Oberman as Jessica Kinberg
• Annette Badland as Lou
• Ingrid Oliver as Yvonne
• Maeve Courtier-Lilley as Dee Dee
• Finty Williams as Enid Corval
• Joe McGann as Wiley Corval
• Amy Gledhill as Ruby Todd

While Coben describes lead star Nesbitt (who had a small role in Missing You, and previously starred in Coben’s Stay Close) as having ‘so much range’ and ‘an empathetic actor’ who is ‘so natural and authentic at all times’, top priority when casting Run Away was to find the perfect Paige. In the end, Dutch-British star of Wolf Hall Ellie de Lange scooped up the role. ‘Ellie really captured both the strength and the frailty of this character of Paige – what she’s going through and the secrets that she’s keeping,’ Coben says. ‘There’s a lot that she has to evoke here and emote in this character.’

If you feel like someone’s missing from the roster, you’re right: frequent Coben collaborator Richard Armitage officially won’t star in Run Away after appearing in both Fool Me Once and Missing You. A ‘dear friend’ of Coben, we’re sure it’s not the end of the road for this duo.

Why Does Harlan Coben Set His Thrillers In Manchester?

Another Coben adaptation, and another relocation from New England to the northeast of, well, old England. But why is Manchester so appealing? ‘When you do as many shows as we’ve done there, you really get the charm,’ he tells Netflix. ‘What’s wonderful about the north of England is there’s such variety. There’s a combination of everyday and eccentric about the settings there.’

There’s also the fact that the production company behind many of Coben’s recent thrillers is Quay Street Productions, a Manchester based team set up by veteran TV writer Nicola Shindler OBE, who is renowned for her relationships with writers – including, of course, Harlan Coben. Before she set up Quay Street in 2021, Shindler worked on The Stranger and Stay Close, both Coben thrillers.

Release Date

No official news just yet, but we know Coben and the team are keen to make a NYD debut three years running. Run Away will be made up of eight episodes – and we expect all of them to launch on Netflix on 1 January 2026. Stay tuned.