From Must-Watch to Pass: All 8 Harlan Coben Netflix Shows Ranked
Directors tend to have favorite actors whom they bring in every second project; Netflix tends to have favorite writers whose works they use as inspiration for their TV shows.
One such writer is Harlan Coben: Netflix has adapted 8 of his books into TV series with mixed success.
Coben's stories are filled with mystery and suspense, so they make a perfect source material for a short TV series, but not every book has been properly adapted without losing its charm. One of the main points of Coben's mastery lies in interwoven storylines, and transforming that into a show proved to be quite difficult for Netflix.
Where Coben was able to amplify suspense by changing focus from one point of view to another, Netflix seemed to either make things confusing (like in Hold Tight) or too simple (in the case of Gone For Good).
Quite unusually for Netflix, the first Coben adaptation, Safe, is considered one of the best — and we all know how rocky Netflix's venture into making original content at the beginning was.
But more often than not Netflix succeeded in adapting his books into shows and was able to create a captivating and binge-worthy experience for the viewers.