Harlan Coben’s Run Away TV review — James Nesbitt and Minnie Driver star in twisty thriller

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In any given Harlan Coben adaptation, it is difficult to decide what provides the most pleasure: is it the propulsive plot twists, which have no patience for anything as trivial as believability or common sense, or is it anticipating which familiar face of British television is going to appear next? This take on the writer’s 2019 novel Run Away, about a father searching for his missing daughter, is better than Amazon’s recent Coben thriller Lazarus, which was an eccentric ghost story about father-and-son psychiatrists. This is slightly more grounded, with the emphasis on the slightly. It is written by Danny Brocklehurst, of Brassic and Shameless fame, who has turned his hand to several Coben series before and clearly knows how to handle the material.

James Nesbitt stars as Simon Greene, a father-of-three married to paediatric doctor Ingrid, played by Minnie Driver. Their daughter Paige ran away a year ago and has been missing ever since, until one day a text informs Simon where and when he can find her. He locates her busking in a park, dishevelled and looking unwell. As soon as she sees him, she flinches and flees.

She is with her boyfriend Aaron, a less-than-salubrious type who runs over to intervene; in a rage, Simon beats him up. This act of paternal vengeance is captured on camera, posted online, and soon goes viral. So far, so Taken — with a TikTok twist — but Nesbitt is more upstanding than Liam Neeson’s furious father, and the truly gruesome violence comes from elsewhere.

The missing daughter strand would be enough for most series, but this ladles on the plot thickly. It has several competing strands that must be tied together, and it gamely gives that a go. Ruth Jones appears as Elena Ravenscroft — characters here either have pointedly pedestrian names or sound like they’ve been plucked from a medieval tome — a former police officer turned private detective who is investigating two separate cases. The first involves a single mother and a young child, with Elena inveigling herself into their lives, while the second is about another missing youth, whose disappearance may well be linked to that of Paige.

Even Simon is forced to point out that Elena’s various storylines are “a lot”, but there is more. There are police officers (Alfred Enoch, Amy Gledhill) and vigilantes (Lucian Msamati). A young couple, Ash and Dee Dee (Jon Pointing and Maeve Courtier-Lilley), are on the road, Natural Born Killers-style, picking off victims on what appears to be a hit-list. The bodies and casualties keep piling up. The series twists and turns, often to the point of dizziness. Yet it slides down easily, and the compulsion to stick around and see how it all slots together is hard to resist.

★★★☆☆

On Netflix from January 1