Creator/Showrunner: Robert Hull Based on: the 2023 novel by Harlan Coben Executive Producers: Harlan Coben, Robert Hull, Bryan Wynbrandt, Steven Lilien, John Weber Directors include: Brad Anderson, Maja Vrvilo Cast: Sam Worthington, Britt Lower, Milo Ventimiglia, Erin Richards, Jonathan Tucker, Madeleine Stowe, Chi McBride, Logan Browning, Clancy Brown, Hugh Thompson Released: Netflix, 18 June 2026
The Setup
David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) is serving a life sentence for the murder of his three-year-old son Matthew — a crime he’s always denied. When new evidence suggests his son might actually be alive, David breaks out of prison alongside his ex-sister-in-law Rachel Mills (Britt Lower), a disgraced former reporter, to find the truth before the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force — led by veteran agent Max Williams (Chi McBride) and his daughter, agent Sarah Greer (Logan Browning) — catches up with them.
My Take
Some upfront context: I’ve watched a lot of Harlan Coben adaptations over the past year, so I came into this already expecting the rhythm — the twists, the red herrings, the characters who turn out not to be who you thought. What’s actually different this time is the setting. Every previous Coben Netflix adaptation I’d watched had that distinctly British feel to it, even when nominally set elsewhere. This is the first one I’ve seen properly planted in America, with a genuinely bigger, more expensive-feeling star cast to match.
The formula itself runs exactly as advertised for anyone who knows Coben’s pattern. There’s doubt cast over several characters who may or may not be trustworthy, there’s misdirection layered on misdirection, and eventually the obvious villains generally are villains, and the people we’re rooting for generally are worth rooting for. It’s comfort-food mystery in that sense — you know broadly what shape the ride will take, even if the specific turns keep you guessing along the way.
The cast mostly delivers. It was genuinely nice seeing Sam Worthington get something meaty to do — he doesn’t get put front and centre like this often these days, and he carries the weary, wrongly-convicted father role well. Milo Ventimiglia, playing Rachel’s shady ex Hayden, felt very much like a lot of the characters he’s played before — competent, but not stretching him. Madeleine Stowe, as the wealthy, secret-hoarding Gertrude Payne, essentially slots into the same register as her Revenge character; she doesn’t need to reach far from what she’s already proven she can do in that mode, and it works, but it’s not new ground for her.
Special credit to Hugh Thompson, who plays David’s father Lenny, a former Boston cop. There’s a genuine physical resemblance between him and Worthington that makes the father-son relationship land more convincingly on screen, whether or not it was a deliberate casting choice. And Chi McBride, paired with Logan Browning as his on-screen daughter and fellow FBI agent, brings a real family dynamic into the law-enforcement side of the story that mirrors the family stakes running through the fugitives’ side and the villains’ side alike — everyone in this show, one way or another, is operating as part of a family unit, which gives the whole thing a surprising thematic consistency underneath all the twists.
It’s not a show that needed to exist in cinemas, and it doesn’t try to be. As a Netflix watch, it does exactly what it sets out to do: pulls you along, keeps you guessing, and closes out satisfyingly enough. Nothing here demands a second viewing, but for a binge on a night off, it earns its place.
3.5 out of 5. Not the best Coben outing I’ve watched, but a solid binge, and one I’d happily recommend.
