Cush Jumbo plays Megan, a wedding-planner mum in Cheshire whose quiet life fractures when Carlton Flynn disappears on the anniversary of an older local mystery. James Nesbitt’s DS Broome, still haunted by the unsolved vanishing of Stewart Green, spots the pattern and reopens the files. The pull drags in Richard Armitage’s Ray, a ruined paparazzo who once documented the same underground club scene Megan fled. Filming wrapped across Lancashire and Greater Manchester in summer 2021, turning Brinscall woods and the Dream steel sculpture at Sutton Manor into key visual anchors for the nocturnal hunt.
Red Production Company keeps the Coben formula intact: domestic façades, buried identities, sudden violence. Head writer Danny Brocklehurst, Coben’s partner since Safe, shifts the action from Atlantic City to Britain’s north-west but keeps the novel’s ticking-clock structure, doling out cliff-hangers at the close of each episode. Composer duo David Buckley and Luke Richards supply pulsing club beats and string stabs that mirror the neon-and-rain palette of cinematographer Giulio Biccari.
Netflix released all eight episodes on 31 December 2021, the fourth Coben adaptation that year. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked it more than Metacritic’s reviewers; viewers simply binge-watched it into the streamer’s Top 10 across 30 countries during the first week.
Production Details
Netflix / 1 Season / 8 Episodes / 2021
Created by: Harlan Coben
Showrunner(s): Harlan Coben
Writer(s): Danny BrocklehurstMick FordCharlotte CobenVictoria Asare-Archer
Producer(s): Juliet Charlesworth
Main Cast
Cush Jumbo as Megan Pierce
James Nesbitt as DS Michael Broome
Richard Armitage as Ray Levine
Sarah Parish as Lorraine Griggs
Daniel Francis as Dave Shaw
Bethany Antonia as Kayleigh Shaw
Poppy Gilbert as 'Barbie'
Jo Joyner as Erin Cartwright
Youssef Kerkour as Fester
Hyoie O'Grady as 'Ken'
Eddie Izzard as Harry Sutton
Ross Boatman as Del Flynn
