Today's Episode
We watched it. Every episode covers the latest installment(s) of a different TV show.
Today's Episode
Run Away (PILOT)
The new year is here and Netflix is back teaming up with Harlan Coben for another British thriller. This time, in Run Away, we’ve got James Nesbitt front and center as Simon, a distraught father searching for his missing daughter. Danger seems to lurk around every corner. After watching the 50-minute first episode, "Seeing is Believing," and reading the book, we dig into what this adaptation brings to the table and how the story translates from Central Park to the UK. On the podcast, way we talk comparisons, plot breakdown, favorite moments, nitpicks, cliffhangers, red herrings, and overall reception, along with our ultimate rating.
Tune in, and welcome to Today’s Episode!
Welcome to today's episode, the podcast, where we discuss the most recent installment of a different series every show. It is Friday, January 2nd, 2026. We're finally in the new year. As in tradition, Netflix has churned out its annual British adaptation of a Harlan Coben thriller. Last year we reviewed Missing You. In 2024, it was Fool Me Once. This year, Runaway, Coben's 31st novel, has been developed into a miniseries starring James Nesbitt and Mini Driver. The pilot scene is believing is about 50 minutes long. We both watched it. I've read the book. You've done some research. This is officially our first review out of a hundred that we will do this year in order to find the best episode and show of 2026. What do you know about 2026? Do you know any fictional universe that takes place in 2026? No, I don't. Then let me tell you one. Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer? Snowpiercer takes place in 2023. Yeah, when they're on the train, you've got Doom, that Dwayne the Rock Johnson movie from 2005. Carl Urban, too. I would always get Doom and Doom confused.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know the difference? Well, yeah. Doom. Doom was like based off the video game, and it was, I think they're on a ship and there's like evil monsters.
SPEAKER_00:So there's no sandworms in Doom.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think so, but I think both include monsters. Okay. I do know that for 2026, there's like a batch of new characters released in the public domain with like Nancy Drew, Betty Boop, and Rover, later known as Pluto.
SPEAKER_00:Betty Boop, that's part of the uh uh the guy with the strong muscles, right? Popeye, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Isn't it Popeye already out? I would assume. I didn't I didn't see. But I also know like even things like the Maltese Falcon work. That's true. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:I had read that as well. Runaway is kind of like the Maltese Falcon. It's a mystery. Yeah. Where you engaged like the Maltese Falcon, and like they're not trying to find some random object in this. We're trying to find Paige. Paige, the daughter of the main character.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that this, uh, when compared to like Fool Me Once or Missing You, I think this was probably my favorite Harlan Coben adaptation. I thought that this one actually was way more intriguing. Simon Green, and it may just be James Nesbitt's uh character, but I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, what about the mystery though was so intriguing to you?
SPEAKER_01:I thought that it was a lot better because fool me once and missing you, uh, I know you read both. They kind of rely on the same twists, right?
SPEAKER_00:Where it's like, if I mean this one definitely has some of the cliche stuff. Like Lou, the tech person, there's always a tech guy in a Harlan Coben novel. But I would say that like I got a little tired of the first one. I think the husband was dead, and the second time it was the fiance. Now we got a mix up, it's it's the daughter, and she's not dead. She's just missing. And and everybody seems to see her every once in a while. And there's this other dead body that's over there, but no one really cares about that. Let's let's get into the setup. You tell me what I need to perfect here. But there's this distraught father, you said his name is Simon. His light begins to spiral as he's trying to find his daughter who went to college and then turned to drugs. And he goes viral when he actually does find her because he beats up her deadbeat roommate, Aaron. Not not her roommate from college, but who she's shacking up with now wherever they are in the dungeons.
SPEAKER_01:Well, he gets a text, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So I I don't think that the it's too much of a spoiler to say like certain things that have absolutely no relevance to like the murders and stuff like that. But in order to find his daughter the first time in the park, he does need to pay off some guy. And I think his name is Dave. And they'll expand on that later, but it's not super important. It's not like Dave's the killer of Aaron.
SPEAKER_01:And at very first, I was wondering if like this was going to go really weird where like Paige lost her mind and didn't recognize who her father was. But no, she recognizes she just doesn't want to see him.
SPEAKER_00:Like yeah, you can tell they like put a little like bruising on her, and it's like she's definitely supposed to be a tweaker, sort of like always needing heroin or whatever else that she's on. And part of that is like what happened, you know? That's the whole psychological game of where the family's at, mini driver character, mini driver's character Ingrid, uh, as the mom and uh Nesbitt as the dad. They have two other kids, they have another daughter, and then they have Sam, who is now in college, and it's like, how are they turning out okay? And yet Paige, like, what went wrong with her? And then we get this quick flashback in the beginning of the episode, which they kind of do in all of the Netflix series. They always give you a flashback to something happened. Usually it's it's like way back in time. This time it's only a couple of years, where Paige is in college and she goes to her dorm and she has a flashback within that flashback, and you see something, and then suddenly there's a stranger in her dorm. You're not supposed to make a lot of it quite yet because you don't know what happened to Paige.
SPEAKER_01:This first scene was very strange because it starts off with trailer music and even trailer shots because it's just following her from the back.
SPEAKER_00:And then, yeah, the the I think you're just supposed to know that she's at this college called Lanford, right? Yes, right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's supposed to be, I think, in Manchester. That's and then she one of the flashbacks showed like a face just gushing with blood, and I visibly flinched. I think that's the only time I've ever flinched in a Harlan Cohen TV series.
SPEAKER_00:I'm trying to remember what school she went to in the book. I think it was Columbia, I think it was in New York.
SPEAKER_01:Um, yeah, because I know that Harlan Coban, he lives in New Jersey and he's very local when he writes the book. So it's always funny when Netflix takes that and puts in the book.
SPEAKER_00:She was inspired to write the book from sitting in Central Park in Strawberry Fields and like watching the street musicians because they have so many street artists and stuff like that in Central Park. And so it was weird. That was one of the things I was a little tentative and afraid of going into this show is like, how can you even compete with a Central Park location anywhere in London? And they don't even try because he's just on some random bench in a random park, and then she shows up. And obviously, he knows that she was going to be there, but like there's no other musicians that are there at the time. And that that's kind of described in the book as to why that is. But uh, yeah, so he intervenes, he beats up Aaron, he goes viral for that moment, and then later on, Aaron turns up dead. But we're talking months later. There is a time jump. I don't think they even talk too much about it in the show, but it flips to months later. Aaron is dead, and then persistently, even though he's the primary suspect, Simon and Ingrid, his wife, go to the apartment where their daughter was last seen, where Aaron's body was, and then they go downstairs to this drug den that's run by a guy named Rocco, and they start talking to Rocco and start throwing out numbers like, We'll give you 10K if you tell us where our daughter is. And Rocco's about to tell them something when suddenly this other dude, Luther, pops up as one of number Rocco's number twos and just shoots uh at like who knows, and and he ends up hitting Ingrid. And then and Ingrid goes down, it cut it cuts the room. Simon jumps on his wife, he yells no, and then you hear another gunshot, right?
SPEAKER_01:This this was so strange to me because just going back really fast, how he got viral for beating up uh the boyfriend was very strange.
SPEAKER_00:It's like 250,000 views within the first hour or something.
SPEAKER_01:Because James Nesmitt talked about how it encourages the view of what happens when things go viral, but especially with like TikTok and Facebook and all these things nowadays, like we're kind of past the days at Tumblr or World Star, whenever these like beat up videos were kind of getting at their peak. This is an adolescence.
SPEAKER_00:So, like adolescence had sort of a similar ideology of like, we're gonna show you what the world is now, how kids are taking in media, how what's coming out of it, how people are are trolled, and that and like you know, their mentality of it. This feels like a really, really cheap version of that where they're just like anything can go viral and anybody's perspective, anybody can get canceled, you know, that type of thing. And so he's seen as beating up this sad that he's a rich dude in a suit, and he's beating up this drugged up dude, but he just looks like a random homeless guy looking for money, and it just looks terrible. The optics are are really bad. But the thing is, because Aaron just runs away, he doesn't want to part any part of the law, no one can press charges. So it just haunts Simon throughout the book more because of just how people look at him, you know. Like in the book, they don't show this scene, but like the school that his other daughter goes to calls him and says, Hey, we're gonna not be able to use you on the board of this like special community. And he's like, Well, then I'm gonna take my donation back. And they're like, You can't do that. And he's like, Yes, I can. And so uh stuff like that happens. We do see one of the parents give him the stink eye during the uh parent-teacher conference later on in the show. Yeah. So they they do make some mention of it, and for the most part, the book stays pretty cons uh like like the book and the show are are pretty in tune.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It's it yeah, you're kind of talking about public perception. I just meant like from 200,000 views to two million views, as they say in the TV show, just like an hour. That won't actually be the case.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, especially given that it was just him kicking some guy, right? It wasn't something cool or or something like weirdly weird about it, you know, but who knows? Also, they said YouTube rather than one of those other ones. I feel like YouTube it's it's slower nowadays. Yeah, like it doesn't rise as as quickly. But maybe when the book was made, uh you said 2019, right? Yep. That's the well, what's the B storyline here? We got Elena that she is a uh PI investigator. She all the obviously all three of these storylines are gonna come into play together. But right now, she has been hired by a guy named Thorpe to find his missing son. And uh she's also hanging out in like this vegan diner where she's tracking a different woman. I I honestly don't know what that storyline is about.
SPEAKER_01:It was it was very strange, yeah, because she says, like, I found your dog, but it seemed like that was really a cover for what she's actually trying to do.
SPEAKER_00:In the original thing, her introduction is when she takes the job from Thorpe for the sun. So that played out exactly like it does in the in the book. But in this show, I think what they might be doing is that they might be taking her case, like the developments that happen further along and bringing them in. Because anything that has anything to do with the diner happens in the last few chapters. Um, it doesn't happen well this early.
SPEAKER_01:It reminds me a lot of Rainmaker. I remember like the biggest twist of that book they give away, like in the first few minutes of the pilot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this isn't doing that. But yeah, so then finally we get these these this final pair, um, uh these two assassins who are on the loose. You don't know their names. I do. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler just to say their names are Ash and Dee Dee. They are my favorite character so far. In the books, they are kind of hard to read because it it's probably the worst part of the book. You're you're falling into Simon's narrative because he's the point of view for the most part, and he's trying to find this daughter, but then you jump over to kind of a maniac in Ash, who's a killer, and he's just kind of talking about Dee Dee the whole time and like her backstory, and it's just confusing. Well, on the TV show, I agree with you. Like it's really fun, and it's almost like Hazel and Cha Chaw from Umbrella Academy or like the common side effects. I know some people were into that duo, like and having those two, they they killed that guy with absolutely no reservations.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, and I I feels like Dexter. I also like I also like how uh I wasn't sure what was going to happen in that scene because when Ash goes into the garage, he says everything's gonna be fine. He listen to me, and then no, he just kills him. And I also like the foreshadowing that it showed because uh Ash shoots him and then puts the gun in the guy's hand and makes him fire another shot. Those are two shots, and much like the end of this TV series, the bullet hits Ingrid, and then you hear another gunshot. And I thought that was a nice like tie-in.
SPEAKER_00:Did you catch what Didi told him as he was leaving the car? Because they made a point of it. She was like, everyone has to be different. So this isn't the only murder that they're gonna be committing together. I thought wasn't her last line like, do you believe in fate or something? No, then right as he's about to leave the car, and then he jumps back in the car and he's like, I believe in the blah blah blah. You know, but yeah, all of that is directly from the book. So, so I do enjoy watching that. I think that it gets more direct quotes than any of the other series that we've done. And it sticks to the books in terms of characters, lines, plot, and their motivations. That's uh it reminds me a lot of like the better sister when uh when we did the first episode of that, and I was so thrilled that they stuck to the book. The problem with that series, if you remember, is that they used up too much of the book too early. I remember you said like the first two episodes were so I had no idea how they could do the next four or six or whatever. This one, we had so many twists in this Harlan Coben book, and it's long enough where we really haven't gotten through too much of it quite yet.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you knew where it was going to end because after the Cornelius talk, you knew exactly how it was going to end. Like you wrote you wrote it down and we're right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. It was like 15 minutes in or 15 minutes before the ending, and it was pretty clear that they were going to get through to Rocco's part of the storyline, and it just seemed like such a very definitive part. It might even be one of the part ones in the book where it where it ends, certainly where a chapter ends, where you hear that second gunshot, you don't know what it's about. Um, and and obviously you don't know what's the fate of Ingrid at this point. So yeah, I think that the book and the sorry, that the episode gets the book right, it gets uh Ash and Dee Dee right because they're improving upon those characters, and from a purely mystery standpoint, you tell me like it just feels compelling. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So and that's why I'm saying that it's so much better than fool me once or missing you. I actually was like enjoyed watching this, you know, uh, because I think that like James Nesbitt, he does a good job, but also there wasn't just I didn't feel like any point in this episode, there was just stuff that they threw at the screen. Like I was a little afraid when he was beating up Aaron in the park that that was just going to be there for no reason. But then later on, when Aaron ends up dead, it's like, oh no, they needed a motive for that character to be in the center of the of the murder, and it made sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, obviously, there's a lot of stuff we don't even know from the past. So we're gonna look at a lot of past frames. One of my nitpicks though is that the way that James Nesbitt, when we do see his inner monologue playing out, it he for some reason has it in the same aspect ratio as an actual TikTok. Like, what's the deal with that? Why is his mind memories in vertical? Like it was yeah, that was very weird. It's not like he's watching TV while he's doing it. It's like that's your in that's your mind.
SPEAKER_01:They hired influencers also. I think that like that scene where they're showing all the influencers and everyone reacting to that video. Those are actually people.
SPEAKER_00:Like yeah, they were showing how Aaron's video exploded and whatever. I thought that that was fine. The 20% that they do not get right from the book or that they change for the show's uh thing, it's glaring. It sticks out to me. Like, for instance, Detective Isaac, he's so much less cool than he is in the book, and he also is way more arrogant. He's the one who's first on the scene. And when we see Aaron's body, we don't even see Aaron's body in the book. We just are told about like later on that he was missing three fingers, that it looked like he had been tortured for a while. But Detective Isaac, he shows up at uh Simon's workplace and he says, This isn't an official interview. If you talk to me, which I know you want to lawyer up right now, but if you don't, I if you do, then I won't be able to tell you about like what the update with Paige is because there's this dead body. And so he flirts with the it could have been a really cool, nuanced scene, but that's not what the type of show this is. This is a show that kind of gives you everything from the outset. Like, this is the point of the scene. This is the one.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say he sounds more easygoing in the book. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:He was very aggressive, and he's very polite in the in the book. He he is also one of the people who kind of figures out that Simon isn't the primary suspect. Like, as the viewer, we kind of know that, but like he also gauges that. Well, in in the mo in the TV show, it seems like he is 100% committed to Simon being the guy. There's a line of questioning that goes on in the book's office that never happens that kind of may indicate like more spoilers than I guess they want to give away quite yet.
SPEAKER_01:And when Isaac does uh interrogate him in the TV series, he's like, This is my domain. I'm gonna be the one that's gonna be a good thing.
SPEAKER_00:The lawyer's able to kind of like cool things off in the book, but it it's the opposite case here. Also, the lawyer makes a weird expression where she kind of like commits to the the uh her client having made a mistake, which like usually you would expect a lawyer to keep a straight face no matter what her client says, but she it's just weird when James Nesbitt is getting more and more mad, and then he finally ends with like, but I wouldn't kill him.
SPEAKER_01:I did like the lawyer scene though when we first see her, and she's like, What exactly happened? And he talked about uh he was like, Well, I assaulted the guy, and she's like, No, you didn't. This is self-defense. I thought that the lawyer was one of the best characters. Right.
SPEAKER_00:That's why it was strange for in the sequence when she does kind of like make that like staunch face of like, oh no, he just made a mistake. Like, you don't show when your client makes a mistake, you shut them up, but you don't like, you know, make it obvious to the cops or something like that. So then you also have uh who else? Yeah. So Cornelius. Oh, yeah, yeah. Cornelius is the landlord of the place that they go to visit at the end, the the daughter's uh flat. We only saw him for one scene. And he's like in the book, a way more laid-back guy. He's way more funny, and they decide to go visit the daughter's flat in the daytime. They still take off all their jewelry and stuff and they try to like wear less rich clothes so that like they know that they would get uh mugged otherwise or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:I think it was more also just a fit in.
SPEAKER_00:But in this, they there's a lot more night scenes, and they decide to go in the middle of the night to like a place that has a bunch of trap houses, a bunch of drug dens, a bunch of like drug dealers around. And it's like Cornelius is the one dude that they can kind of trust, and he lets them into the apartment just like he does here. But in this, he's just way more serious. And I guess that's gonna take away from his character just as a whole, because he has a very sad plot as far as his background is concerned. And so that's what made his kind of like his nice. It was nice to have him be kind of a laid-back dude, but also have this like dark history.
SPEAKER_01:Do you think he's going to be less in the TV series? Like, is this when he shows up in the book?
SPEAKER_00:No, he's a pretty big ally of Simon's, so I I wouldn't say that. But Lou is the tech person. We never actually really have a conversation between Lou and Elena that I remember. So the fact that they cast her to be like 90 years old, like my grandma is where it's a naked gunjo.
SPEAKER_01:It felt it felt like I was watching the Detroiters where they have that assistant that is like very geriatric. It was it was so funny because yeah, she's supposed to be very up-to-date and in the techie of the group, and she she's this very old person. She's supposed to have a bigger part in the series, way bigger part of the series than she has.
SPEAKER_00:Reminds me a little bit of like the tracker people. Like he has that two, those two people that he would work. At least he did with the pilot.
SPEAKER_01:I know that like but even then, even then, they were like middle age.
SPEAKER_00:Like yes, she is she is elderly. Rocco, I would oh also there the weird thing about the other daughter is that like in some scenes she was in a wheelchair, and then some scenes she was walking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you realize that I was I was confused.
SPEAKER_00:You're talking about Anya, and yeah, she like she she rolls in the room. Anya in the book, when her dad gets into trouble, like she won't even speak to him. Like, she is so cringed out by the fact that her dad just went viral that she just like she has her best friend on the phone with her dad, but she will not talk to him. It's only after a while. But I don't remember them ever saying that she was disabled. And also, like, is this person not? Because, like, again, why are you in a wheelchair? Some scenes and then it was yeah, it was it was strange.
SPEAKER_01:It was weird.
SPEAKER_00:And then Rocco's pad is supposed to be a straight up trap house where like people are sleeping on each other and there's like heroin being passed around. And instead they turn it into sort of like a uh a blurst man cave because like he's got a giant video game set up, and there's like a couple dudes that are there was the guy smoking a bong to the side, yeah. Yeah, he's the one who corrects his language. He's like, it's it's whom, not whom. Uh yeah, and and yeah, so but I think the weakest scene to me was still the uh the interrogation because it's just so far departing from what the book kind of set it up to be. That said, all this is just nitpick stuff. Uh Central Park isn't London Park. Um, they didn't have the rights for the Beatles stuff because like she was singing a lot of million,$10 million per song or something for Beatles. Yeah, she was singing Beatles songs in the book, and I was hoping that. Flicks would get the rights to it. Simon's point of view, uh, you're you're able to get it for the most part, but like it's still not going to be as embrace as it would be from hearing it or or or like you know, reading through his mind. So uh in a way that that kind of takes away from it. But overall, uh, you did did it remind you of all her fault?
SPEAKER_01:All her fault. Uh I thought it was better than all her fault, actually. But like the drama.
SPEAKER_00:I will tell you this the the twists that will be coming around are a lot like Game of Thrones twists and a lot like all her fault twists.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting, because those are two very different things. Picking that up together.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, in the end, it'll make a lot of sense to you if if you've seen those shows. Um, what would you give the series out of 10? If a run-of-the-mill math network TV show is like a five, this I would probably give like a 6.5. Um, I I do think it improves on what we've seen so far with Netflix and Harlan Coben uh series together. I think the book adaptation is going to fit well. And I I I do look forward to how the Ash and Didi storyline is going to uh fall out. Ultimately, I think the main point of the story, no spoiler, is that people should be a lot more open with each other. Like there should be less secrets. I would you would avoid a lot of the drama that's about to happen if people had just told each other stuff.
SPEAKER_01:I would I would give it a six out of ten. I know that for the book, uh there was a headline that said that it's so twisty you could sprain your ankle or you could twist your ankle.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:But for the TV series, this may be the best Harlan Copen adaptation to date. It has an 86% on Ron Tomatoes. Variety called the show fascinating and intensely detailed, calling the mystery and an astonishing web, involving an array of seemingly unrelated characters and circumstances. True.
SPEAKER_00:Like I don't think you could guess right now where Elena and oh they show you at the end that she gets an update that the person that she's looking for is somehow connected to Paige. Yes. But we don't know why and we don't know how. And Simon is going to have to be the front runner in figuring out a lot of the stuff on his own.
SPEAKER_01:And then Tech Radar and Ready Steady Cut gave it four out of five. And this is probably, I assume, going to just be, again, a juggernaut for Netflix. I always find it funny because the posters are always the same for no matter if it's this foamy once or missing you. You have four characters lined up in order of importance, somber expressions, a skyline in the background, and then a mansion at the bottom. And there's always something nefarious going on with the mansion, so it seems like they always have the same poster design.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's probably the same person, too. Yeah. James Nesbitt. James Nesbitt makes the posters. Anything else that we want to say for our first episode of 2026? No, I think that's why. Do you want to go through any of the other episodes? Like, what's our next one? Our next one is going to be uh Best Medicine. Best Medicine. And we might try to put it out on a Tuesday as opposed to a Monday. See if that's a thing this year. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in the next episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Bye. Bye.