As one of the most prolific and successful mystery writers of the past 30 years, it’s unsurprising that many of Harlan Coben’s novels have been adapted for the small screen by a streamer like Netflix. Featuring more twists and turns than a country lane, Coben’s stories are perfectly suited to the miniseries format. However, some have been more successfully adapted than others.
Harlan Coben’s Netflix TV Shows | Release Date | Episodes | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|---|---|
Safe | May 2018 | 8 | 71% |
The Stranger | January 2020 | 8 | 83% |
The Woods | June 2020 | 6 | 89% |
The Innocent | April 2021 | 8 | 100% |
Gone For Good | August 2021 | 5 | 38%* |
Stay Close | December 2021 | 8 | 92% |
Hold Tight | April 2022 | 6 | 41%* |
Fool Me Once | January 2024 | 8 | 60% |
*audience score only
Of the eight Coben books so far adapted, most have enjoyed a generally positive critical reception. Productions of Safe, The Stranger, The Woods, The Innocent, Stay Close, and Fool Me Once have all been rated as “Fresh“ on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes – further highlighting just how suited Coben’s writing is to television. However, the burgeoning Coben-verse hasn’t been a total success. Gone For Good and Hold Tight have both failed to impress critics, while other shows have been more polarizing than their overall scores suggest. To help viewers choose where to begin, here’s every Harlan Coben Netflix show ranked worst to best.
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8 Gone For Good
2021
Based on Coben’s 2002 novel of the same name, Gone For Good is a French-language thriller that sadly fails to live up to its source material. Starring Finnegan Oldfield, Nicolas Duvauchelle, and Garance Marillier, the 2021 series uses multiple timelines to tell a story of family tragedy and hidden secrets. The main narrative revolves around Guillaume, whose girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance somehow connects to a personal tragedy from 10 years previously. Although Gone For Good is full of Coben’s signature surprises, the use of multiple timelines overcomplicates the story, to the point where many of the most significant reveals lose their impact.
7 Hold Tight
2022
Much like Gone For Good, Hold Tight‘s greatest weakness is its muddying of what could have been an effective premise. The original novel revolves around multiple disparate storylines that are only knitted together in the book’s dramatic ending. The Polish-language miniseries tries to take a similar approach, starting with a mysterious murder and disappearance. Yet audiences were largely left confused as to which events were taking place in what storyline. As a result, most were left frustrated, with some giving up on the series before its conclusion – typified by Hold Tight‘s poor audience Rotten Tomatoes score of just 41%.
6 Fool Me Once
2024
Like many of Harlan Coben’s best stories, Fool Me Once uses elaborate plot twists to subvert the audience’s expectations. In the case of the Michelle Keegan-led miniseries, these twists tread right up to the line between shocking and laughable. Keegan stars as Maya Stern, an ex-soldier whose husband is killed, before apparently reappearing on a baby monitor days later. The series then unpacks the couple’s complicated relationship, as well as explaining the connection between the husband’s murder and another previous death. While Fool Me Once stretches credulity, audiences and critics have generally enjoyed the series – largely thanks to its brazen approach to the ending reveal.
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5 The Stranger
2020
Based on Coben’s successful 2015 novel, The Stranger successfully recaptures the novel’s atmosphere of paranoia and deception. Starring Richard Armitage as Adam Price, the series begins with Price’s interaction with the titular Stranger – a mysterious woman in a baseball cap who tells him that his wife had faked a pregnancy. This kickstarts a catalog of devastating events, including the disappearance of Price’s wife and further blackmail against other people in his orbit. Although not received with the same popular acclaim as the book, The Stranger is a solid adaptation that faithfully adheres to the original story.
4 Safe
2018
The first of Harlan Coben’s collaborations with Netflix, Safe remains one of the platform’s strongest series yet. Unlike other series, Safe is an original story created by Coben for the small screen and is not based on one of his novels. The show follows Michael C. Hall’s Tom – a grieving widower whose world is further shattered when one of his teenage daughters goes missing. Full of the author’s signature sleight of hand, Safe suffers from idiosyncratic features such as Hall’s forced English accent. Nevertheless, the story is gripping and proved a hit with viewers as well as critics.
3 Stay Close
2021
Another collaboration between actor Richard Armitage and Harlan Coben, Stay Close is a fine exemplar of several core Coben tropes. Like many of the author’s other stories, Stay Close follows three seemingly unconnected characters who are secretly unified by their ties to a single significant event. In this case, the event in question is the mysterious disappearance of a man named Stewart Greene, whose case threatens to upturn all three main characters’ lives for different reasons. Stay Close successfully manages to balance all three stories without compromising the pace of the action, making it one of the best Harlan Coben adaptations to date.
2 The Woods
2020
Another Polish-language production of Coben’s work, The Woods is a masterful example of non-linear storytelling. Set across two different time periods, the show switches between 1994 and 2019, in which a detective is forced to confront a horrific event from his past to solve a murder in the present. Tense and brooding and boasting some solid performances from its cast, The Woods is as much a study in trauma as it is a gripping whodunnit. Unlike lesser Coben adaptations, The Woods successfully interweaves its two settings, making its finale all the more effective as a result.
1 The Innocent
2021
The best Harlan Coben TV series on Netflix, The Innocent deliberately takes its time to tell a devastating story of guilt and forgiveness. The drama centers on Mateo, introducing him as he participates in a nightclub brawl, accidentally killing a man. Although he seems to be piecing his life back together, it soon becomes clear that the past is not finished with him. The first Spanish-language production of Coben’s work, The Innocent is both emotive and thrilling, featuring several daring plot twists that, in lesser hands, could seem ridiculous. In this instance, however, Coben’s twisted story works on every level.
