Fool Me Once: a guide to Harlan Coben's Netflix thrillers

Bestselling author Harlan Coben has scored another hit for Netflix with new thriller "Fool Me Once", which is topping the streaming service's charts in the UK and other countries worldwide.

Released on New Year’s Day, the series stars "Coronation Street" and "Our Girl" actor Michelle Keegan alongside Joanna Lumley and is adapted from Coben's 2016 novel of the same name. 

The "vastly successful" US writer has penned a total of 35 mystery novels that have made him a "fixture" on bestseller lists across the globe, said The Independent's Katie Rosseinsky. And in 2018, he signed a "five-year mega-deal" with Netflix to adapt 14 of his books into English and foreign-language TV series. 

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"Fool Me Once" is the fourth English production, after "Safe" (2018), "The Stranger" (2020) and "Stay Close" (2022), and a further four of Coben's books have been reworked into Spanish, French or Polish productions for the streamer. 

All are "chock full of gasp-inducing, head-scratching moments", said Rosseinsky, and most have been popular with audiences, although the critical verdict has been "up, down and frankly all over the place". 

Here is a run-down of every Coben adaptation on Netflix, listed in order of their latest score on Rotten Tomatoes.

8. Gone for Good (2021) – 38%

This French-language adaptation follows a man who is "plunged into a dizzying mystery when his girlfriend vanishes", according to the Netflix synopsis.

The Rotten Tomatoes score for "Gone for Good" is low, but The Tab urges potential viewers not to "judge it too harshly", because the show doesn't have an official rating, only an audience score, and these are "always loads lower than an overall rating".

The mini-series is actually "fairly engrossing", according to a review by The Hindu, and features Coben's "favourite themes of ordinary people getting caught in extraordinary circumstances and the past never staying buried".

7. Hold Tight (2022) – 42%

A Polish thriller set in a "tight-knit, affluent" Warsaw suburb, "Hold Tight" follows the family of a young man who goes missing after a friend dies, said Cosmopolitan, "slowly unraveling those around him, and exposing numerous secrets and lies".

Like "Gone for Good", the show's Rotten Tomatoes score is based on audience reviews only, but professional critics were also unimpressed. The Review Geek described "Hold Tight" as a "boring, meandering, perfunctory mess", while Missouri radio station KDHX said the six-part series "sags and digresses too often".

6. Safe (2018) – 71%

"Safe" gets a "full, true" Rotten Tomatoes score based on both critics reviews and audience ratings, said The Tab. The plot follows a rich, widowed English surgeon who turns detective after his eldest daughter goes missing from their "seemingly perfect" gated community.

The show "floors it straight from the off", said The Guardian's Sam Wollaston in a three-star review, "then twists through chicanes and hairpins to leave you hanging on for dear life".

"Safe" isn't profound, Wollaston added, but it will keep you up at night, "bingeing, wolfing down the episodes, doing that thing: the midnight Net-feast".

5. Fool Me Once (2024) – 75%

Netflix's latest Coben thriller "has critics and audiences divided", said Screen Rant.

"Fool Me Once" follows a grieving widow, Maya, who "uncovers a deadly conspiracy" after seeing her supposedly murdered husband on a secret nanny cam, according to the streamer's synopsis.

Many critics have praised the eight-part series for top-notch acting and a twisting plot that The Telegraph said "moves like a slinky on steroids". But audiences have criticised the show for "too much exposition and too many plot holes", Screen Rant said.

4. The Stranger (2020) – 83%

"The Stranger " was the series that helped Coben's Netflix dramas "really hit the mainstream", said The Tab, "and its Rotten Tomatoes score reflects this".

The central premise is an "easy hook", said Forbes. A "beautiful, mysterious stranger" appears "out of nowhere" to tell a "family man", played by Richard Armitage, a "terrible secret about his wife". But with other twists that come off like "mystery mad libs", including "a naked boy in the woods and a headless alpaca left on a street corner", the plot is "too tangled for its own good".

Yet this is what makes the eight-part series so interesting, said The Independent's Ed Cumming. The adaptation "shows its machinery so nakedly that it almost defies you to switch off". 

"Whether you binge the entire series in an afternoon or hurl the controller out of the window in frustration will depend mainly on your tolerance for being mucked around," he added.

3. The Woods (2020) – 89%

 Set in Poland, "The Woods" follows a prosecutor hunting for answers surrounding his sister's disappearance 25 years earlier.

The six-part series is "twisty right up to the final moments", said Den of Geek. "Some might say even too twisty", but the show certainly demands "your full attention". And "once you're hooked", like the central character, "you'll be dying to find out what happened all those years ago".

2. Stay Close (2021) – 92%

James Nesbitt plays "a brooding detective" in this eight-parter, which centres on a woman who is "the keeper of a Secret Past that will soon rear its ugly head and threaten everything she holds dear", said The Guardian's Lucy Mangan.

"Stay Close" is the kind of crime drama that’s "best not taken too seriously", said Ellie Harrison in The Independent, with "as many clichés as characters".

That may be true, agreed Mangan, but "you won't be able to turn it off".

1. The Innocent (2021) – 100%

The "most successful Harlan Coben adaption to date", said The Tab, Spanish-language series "The Innocent" follows an accidental killing that leads a man "down a dark hole of intrigue and murder".

This TV reworking of Coben's 2005 novel is "TV for troubled times", said NME. "There is no slow burn. No inertia. It is a story designed for modern-day attention spans."

"The Innocent" is a "great adaptation", said Forbes, "structuring its intriguing storyline around some strong character arcs, performed by a great cast".

Whether viewers "binge" the show will depend only on "how much mayhem" they can "withstand", added NME.