Every Harlan Coben Netflix TV Series, Ranked From Worst To Best

Love him or hate him, mystery fans can’t get enough of Harlan Coben. The American novelist has attracted devoted readers from around the world who buy his books for their shocking twists, indulgent characters, and thrillingly baffling conclusions. Some have favorably compared him to Stephen King; others, such as The Independent’s Nick Hilton, feel that he makes “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown look like “a paragon of literary restraint” by comparison.

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Naturally, Coben has caught the attention of Hollywood producers. There had been some successful attempts at adapting his work in the 2000s and 2010s, as well as a few unsuccessful attempts (Hugh Jackman, “Suicide Squad” director David Ayer, Ben Affleck, and “Blonde” director Andrew Dominik have all been attached to projects that ended up going nowhere). Things really took off in 2018, when Coben signed a deal with Netflix to produce several serialized adaptations of his work. The results have been very mixed, so we took a look at them all to determine which Harlan Coben Netflix series is the best.

For its unique and arguably contrived premise, “Missing You” feels like a torturous remixing of the most groan-worthy tropes relied on by the Netflix adaptations of Harlan Coben’s work. Rosalind Eleazar (AppleTV+’s “Slow Horses”) stars as Kat Donovan, a lonely detective who struggles to form meaningful relationships with others — especially in her romantic life. This stems in large part from the way her engagement to her fiancé Josh Buchanan (Ashley Walters of “Adolescence”) ended over a decade prior. Shortly after her father was murdered, Josh simply vanished from her life, never to be seen again — that is, until Kat’s friend sets her up with a profile on a dating app, and the swiping investigator finds herself unexpectedly matched with him.

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So, how exactly does this story about a lost love eventually arrive at the usual Coben destination of murder and intrigue? Through the use of a truly dizzying amount of baffling twists that come so fast you almost can’t process how ridiculous they are. And even if you are able to follow where exactly the nonsensical story is headed at any given moment, that’s likely due to a level of attention that the series absolutely does not reward, given that it is otherwise a boring, overlong drama with little insight to offer about trauma and relationships. Eleazar and co-star Richard Armitage (a recognizable face for fans of Coben’s Netflix adaptations) do their best to make it compelling, and there are some moments of spectacle to be appreciated, but we still can’t help but swipe left on “Missing You.”

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If “Missing You” is an exercise in mixing up all the contrivances of a Harlan Coben story without achieving even a fraction of their usual impact, “Gone for Good” is a more focused but no less tedious examination of his perspective on families, secrets, and death. The French-language miniseries follows social worker Guillaume Lucchesi (Finnegan Oldfield) as he attempts to unravel two seemingly disparate (but, of course, sloppily connected) mysteries that have turned his life into a confusing series of tragedies.

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The root of all Guillaume’s problems seems to stem from a night in the not-too-distant past, on which his loving, longtime girlfriend Sonia (Garance Marillier, whom readers may recognize from the controversial cult 2016 horror film “Raw”) breaks up with him — only to be gunned down alongside his adoring brother Fred (Nicolas Duvauchelle). Now, many years later, on the eve of his mother’s funeral, Guillaume’s new love, Judith (Nailia Harzoune), has vanished mere moments after seemingly accepting his proposal of marriage, leading Guillaume on a twisting investigation that unveils secrets about the family he thought he knew.

Compared to “Missing You” and perhaps even some of the films a little higher on this list, “Gone for Good” does have a remarkably strong central performance in Oldfield’s Guillaume, which almost manages to sell the entire endeavor as a mystery drama rather than a viable thriller. But dreadful pacing and plotting ultimately overtake whatever the cast as a whole brings to the material, making for an aimless story that feels like it would’ve been better served as a pared-down film as opposed to a five-episode event.

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It was difficult for us to decide whether or not “Hold Tight” deserved to be placed above “Gone for Good.” Indeed, we are admittedly splitting hairs here. But while “Hold Tight” suffers from essentially all the same problems as the series above and additionally lacks a performance half as captivating as Finnegan Oldfield in “Gone for Good,” it benefits from a much more even pace. And when it comes to schlocky, twist-heavy mysteries like these two Harlan Coben tales, pacing is the difference between an interesting but unwatchable bore and something like “Hold Tight,” which just barely clears the bar for passably thrilling entertainment.

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The six-episode Polish-language miniseries takes place in the upper-class suburbs of Warsaw, where the teenage children of wealthy (read: detached) parents have seemingly become enmeshed in a dark and deadly underworld. The central plot follows Anna and Michał Barczyk (Magdalena Boczarska and Leszek Lichot), whose worlds are thrown into chaos when their son Adam (Krzysztof Oleksyn) disappears without notice. Against an unmotivated police force and a tight-knit neighborhood as suspicious of others as they are secretive, the Barczyks must follow whatever clues they can to find their son — whose very disappearance could reveal a connection to the sudden death of another teen in the community. Though it certainly feels like a stretched-out version of the sort of needlessly convoluted plot you’d expect from an episode of an American crime procedural, “Hold Tight” is the worst of the “put-it-on-while-cleaning-your-apartment” tier of Coben Netflix series.

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“Hold Tight” and “Stay Close” may sound hilariously interchangeable as movie titles, and, indeed, given how many of the same, classic Harlan Coben narrative crutches are in use in both stories, one would be forgiven for mixing them up with one another. What we will say, however, is that while the former series can be pleasant background noise for your spring cleaning, the latter might just be a bit too distracting — and dare we say engaging — at times to serve as such.

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The major difference comes from how “Stay Close” manages to weave together its layered mysteries with a bit more art than the previously mentioned shows. The main thread follows quintessential quiet upper-middle-class suburban housewife Megan Pierce (played by Cush Jumbo, an actor best known for roles in several massive British crime dramas). In a previous life, Megan was “Cassie,” an exotic dancer at the scandalous Viper Club, who was potentially connected to the unsolved disappearance and apparent murder of Stewart Green (Rod Hunt). Now that her old boss Lorraine (Sarah Parish) has ambushed her new life, Megan finds herself unable to keep the past at bay any longer — especially as another murder revives interest in Stewart’s death as potentially being the work of a serial killer.

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The central plot of “Stay Close” is supported, rather than diluted by the usual convoluted Coben subplots, which in this instance follow characters and mysteries more naturally tied to Megan’s story. Richard Armitage reunites with Coben to play photographer Ray Levine, who was once involved with “Cassie” and hasn’t been able to shake her memory since; James Nesbitt, meanwhile, plays Detective Michael Broome, for whom Stewart’s death was traumatic and personal.

Released in March 2025, “Just One Look” sees Harlan Coben’s Netflix collaborations still struggling to reach the same heights they previously had. That being said, it’s also an entertaining enough mystery thriller that, if you find yourself drawn in by its premise and opening moments, will probably be sufficiently satisfying for a snappy six-episode run.

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Maria Dębska plays Greta Rembiewska, a reclusive jewelry designer haunted by memories of fire that engulfed a concert she attended as a young girl. She was the only survivor, and though she has tried to keep her trauma relegated to vivid recurring nightmares, she is reminded of it by a mysterious person who insists upon sending her flowers every year to commemorate the tragedy. On the most recent anniversary, she discovers an unsettling photo of a young woman (her face ominously marked with a red “X”) and a group of people that seemingly includes Greta’s own husband, Jacek Ławniczak (Cezary Łukaszewicz). Though Jacek denies he’s in the picture, he is assaulted and kidnapped soon after its discovery, which eventually leads to Greta being tracked down by Borys Gajewicz (Mirosław Zbrojewicz) — the father of the girl in the photo, who claims that she was murdered several years prior.

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In fairness, the twists of “Just One Look” can be a bit hard to square, logically speaking. But opposite to “Missing You” and “Gone for Good,” the story moves fast enough that it rarely asks you to sit with any development for too long, managing to keep the viewer engaged in the thrills at the heart of the story rather than the plausibility of its plot.

If you’re fascinated by investigative programs like “To Catch a Predator,” then the Netflix adaptation of Harlan Coben’s “Caught” is right up your alley. In the 2025 Spanish-language thriller series, independent investigative journalist Ema Garay (Soledad Villamil) pursues her own brand of justice through her true crime documentary series (also called “Caught”). The aim of the series is for Ema to track down criminals who have somehow been able to avoid accountability for their crimes and force them to talk to the camera.

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Her current case finds her hot on the trail of a cyber predator who preys on high school girls through an online video game. As one would expect from this wannabe Chris Hansen, Ema goes undercover as a teenager in order to set up an encounter between her crew and this mystery predator — only for her to find herself shockingly meeting up with a man she personally knows and trusts. Though she finds herself compromised by this development and confused by his insistence about his own innocence, she delves deeper into the case when one of the girls targeted by the online threat goes missing.

Despite being full of the same unbelievable twists as other Coben series, “Caught” feels distinct from the rest in terms of its tone and subject matter. That doesn’t necessarily make it a great TV show compared to other Netflix crime dramas, but on Coben’s terms, it’s one of his more successful efforts with the streamer.

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Of all the Harlan Coben Netflix adaptations on this list, “Fool Me Once” just might be the most divisive among fans. It’s one of, if not the most popular, results of the collaboration between Coben and the streamer as of writing, as well as one of our favorite Netflix limited series of all time. This could be because it benefited at the time of its release in 2024 from both the previously garnered positive buzz of already released Coben Netflix series (most of which we’ve yet to discuss on this list), as well as the continued support of British super-producer Danny Brocklehurst. In addition to the fact that Brocklehurst was responsible for the best of the Coben Netflix series, he’s an early Coben adapter who turned his novel “The Five” into a riveting British crime drama all the way back in 2016.

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This is all to say that, unlike most of the shows previously discussed, “Fool Me Once” is not only a watchable show if you buy into Coben’s style, but a decent entry in the crime genre. Michelle Keegan leads the series as Maya Burkett, a veteran mourning the death of her wealthy husband Joe (played by, you’ll never guess, Richard Armitage), who died in a freak, cover-of-night shoot-out that has yet to be solved. Though she held his body in his arms as he bled out into the street, she still sees his ghost everywhere she goes — including on her daughter’s nanny cam. Coben resorts to the “Are you really sure they’re dead?” trope once more here, but Brocklehurst manages it much better here than the creatives behind “Gone for Good,” for example. He’s apparently the perfect visionary to render Coben’s unwieldy work with the breathless, guiltless drama and thrills it’s built upon.

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Another collaboration between Harlan Coben, Netflix, and Danny Brocklehurst, “Safe” is yet another surprisingly effective Coben yarn. “Dexter” star Michael C. Hall leads the 2018 miniseries as Tom Delaney, a widower who moves himself and his daughters into an affluent British gated community following the death of his wife. It’s a common story beat in most crime thrillers these days, and Coben doesn’t shy away from the expected cliches inherent to it — there’s weird, yuppie neighbors with hidden agendas, sexual impropriety lurking around every corner, and unsupervised teens with seemingly unlimited access to money, parties, and drugs.

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“Safe” is, well, every bit as safe dramatically as it sounds. This is Coben at his most conventional, perhaps even plausible if you can believe it — and by it, we do mean the still fairly absurd mystery that drives the narrative. As one might’ve guessed, one of Tom’s poor daughters “unexpectedly” disappears, forcing him to turn citizen detective so that he can find out what happened to her and bring her home safely — all while uncovering various secrets about the new, supposedly perfect community he’s made his home. Even if “Safe” is a toned-down riff on an overdone kind of story Coben himself returned to in 2022 with “Hold Tight,” Coben’s story here earns way more credibility simply by reigning his dramatic usual impulses in. This allows traditional storytelling aspects like performance, plotting, and theme to take center stage, making for a more intellectually stimulating mystery than you might expect from the author.

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In many of his novels and adaptations, Harlan Coben uses the trope of having two timelines, past and present, progress at the same time throughout the story, with the perspective shifting back and forth to provide context as necessary. It’s an effective, if unoriginal trick that lends itself well to the mystery genre, though one could argue that Coben’s use of it at this point is so compulsive that it has all but diluted its impact entirely. For these critics, we would offer the 2020 miniseries “The Woods.”

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Another Coben yarn spun into a Polish setting, “The Woods” sees Coben using two timelines more effectively than he does in any other story. In 1994, Paweł Kopiński (Hubert Miłkowski) was a camp counselor responsible for the safety of four young people, including his sister, only for none of them to make it out of the woods. Twenty-five years later, Paweł (Grzegorz Damięcki) is a prosecutor who still believes his sister may be out there somewhere. His world is shaken, however, when human remains are uncovered and linked to the disappearances. Rather than feel like extended flashbacks used simply to show a story event, the past storyline of this series feels like a living, breathing story in its own right, unburdened by the sense of plodding predestination that arises when this trope feels more perfunctory than anything else.

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Harlan Coben’s “The Stranger” is, unfortunately for him, not the best title called “The Stranger” that Netflix has produced, and those of you who mistakenly click on the thrilling 2022 Thomas M. Wright film of the same name may find that it’s ruined your interest in the former miniseries. That said, among the most steadfast of Coben-Netflix watchers, “The Stranger” is broadly considered the best of the adaptations so far.

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Richard Armitage once again stars, playing the perfect husband of the perfect family with the perfect life archetype seen in so many of these stories. Of course, this is soon revealed to be a facade by an external force — in this case, a stranger (played by Hannah John-Kamen) who somehow knows that his perfect wife perfectly faked her perfect pregnancy, then pretended to have a miscarriage in order to cover the deception. Why would she do this, and how would a perfect stranger know such intimate secrets of their lives? Those are the simple questions at the heart of the series that Coben and co. (including Danny Brocklehurst) manage to spin into eight entrancing hours of TV. It has all the hallmarks of a Coben series, for better and for worse, but the pace and plotting are too deviously titillating to ignore.

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Harlan Coben catches a lot of arguably deserved flack for remixing plot points in his stories time and time again. But in the 2021 miniseries “The Innocent,” he and director Oriol Paulo buck many of his most noticeable impulses to tell a story that focuses less on rapid twists and turns and more on the psychological drama of a character thrust into his world.

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Nine years in the past, Mateo Vidal (Marios Casas) had his life derailed by a negligent murder conviction, brought on by a bar fight gone horribly wrong. Though Mateo served his time and attempts to move forward with his new wife Olivia (Aura Garrido) and inherited law practice, he finds himself wrestling with feelings of guilt, shame, and hopelessness that he’ll ever feel like a whole, honest human being. In the midst of this struggle, he discovers evidence that Olivia may be living her own double life, and finds himself sucked into a dangerous web of lies when he tries to investigate further.

Surprising but not gimmicky, and buoyed by a uniquely solid combination of distinctive visuals, strong performances, and focused writing, “The Innocent” is a powerful series that should appeal to both Coben fans and critics alike. It’s certainly the best of his collaborations with Netflix, and one that makes us anxiously excited for what he and the streamer will do together next.

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