Danny Brocklehurst, lead writer and executive producer talks about the making of Harlan Coben’s Run Away, with executive producers Nicola Shindler and Richard Fee. Produced by Quay Street, the series stars Jimmy Nesbitt as father of run away daughter Paige; Ruth Jones plays a private investigator. Run Away releases on Netflix on New Year’s Day.
Danny Brocklehurst, lead writer, executive producer
Which characters in Run Away really leapt off the page when you first read it?
I liked the fact that it was a story about a father. As a father of teens, I did enjoy that aspect. Trying to put across some of the more emotional stuff that every viewer who has got a kid of a certain age can get their head into. The idea that your son or your daughter could have got themselves into a situation that is horrendous. I had read the book Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, the real story of methamphetamine addiction. It’s every parent’s nightmare that their kid will go down that kind of path. And, as a writer, it is a powerful driver for story. The first eight minutes of episode one of Run Away are, I think, exceptional because it is so moving what they have done with it. They have used loads of phone footage, all created. We all record things on our phones now: holidays and birthdays. It is very effective, that sense of a child who is lost. This is not a missing child story as such. Simon knows that Paige is alive and that she has not vanished without trace. It’s more a ‘will this lifestyle kill her before we get her back?’
Run Away feels like one of the closest adaptations to the original novel. Was it a case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?
With The Stranger we needed a whole new kids’ strand put in, so we invented all that and we changed the sex of the stranger. Stay Close took a lot of reinvention but we liked the concept of these people who have been separated for a long time and the mystery. Fool Me Once is closer to the novel although we did introduce a B-story. When it came to Run Away, we found
that it just divided up quite nicely into an eight-part series.
Jimmy Nesbitt played a detective in Stay Close and a villain in Missing You. Does that add to the possibilities when casting him as distraught dad and flawed hero Simon Greene?
Yes. I’ve loved Jimmy ever since Cold Feet and he has done some exceptional work in the meantime, The Missing and obviously Bloody Sunday. When you watch the first episode of this, he is excellent. Just a little twitch of the eye. He gives you the confidence for what you can do for his character. We cut quite a lot of stuff out of the scripts, especially in the later episodes. You sometimes put things in because you worry that it won’t be clear to the audience and then you listen to it at the read-through and you just know that Jimmy will be able to do it without some of your lines.
Is there an ongoing debate with these stories about how much to tell in flashbacks?
We try not to show lots in flashback. Flashback is best used sparingly where possible. It depends on the nature of the story. One or two of the adaptations have used more than others. I don’t think The Stranger had much whereas Safe had quite a bit.
What were you looking for in the roles of the Greene family kids, Paige, Sam and Anya played by Ellie de Lange, Adrian Greensmith and Ellie Henry?
What you are aiming for is a credible-ish family dynamic. You do sometimes see families on TV that don’t look anything like a family. They just look like some actors who have been put together. You want to just make the kids interesting and like real kids. They’ve got a dynamic that works, particularly with the eldest Sam played by Adrian, who is away at university. He isn’t
in the story that much so it would have been quite easy to do the very straightforward swotty- kid-at-uni thing, but we wanted to give him a bit more. He is overly concerned for his dad.
What has Ruth Jones brought to Elena Ravenscroft?
You first meet Elena stealing a dog, which is quite a strange thing to do – my idea, it’s not in the book – but because Ruth is Ruth you instantly like her anyway. And even though Elena is this quite buttoned up character with a little bit of mystery going on behind the eyes you probably know that it is not going to be anything too dark and sinister when you find out the truth. She
brings all those qualities that she is known for even though this is a very different part to anything she has done before.
What can you tell us about former chiropodist, now tech wizard, Lou, played by Annette Badland, who works with Elena?
With Lou, we’ve had tech wizards in shows before and they can sometimes come across as a bit predictable and a bit boring. We wanted to see what we could do that felt more original. Somebody said that they knew a tech person who was older. You always think of tech wizards as being young but they’re not. There are loads of people of a decent age who know how to do tech stuff. They’ve been doing it for years. Lou and Elena’s relationship feels quite different. Ruth and Annette are both great actors and in their own style.
Is there any other character from your various Harlan TV series adaptations that you think has more story to tell?
The only thing I keep saying, and I am sort of joking, but I probably could write a show for the lawyer Jessica Kinberg, who is played by Tracy-Ann Oberman in Run Away. I’ve known Tracy a long time. She worked on Sorted with me in 2006. She is so good. Every time she is on screen as Jessica I think, ‘Yeah, I could write an hour-long TV series for this character.’ I would enjoy doing that. Tracy-Ann is a lot of fun and you could just put brilliant lines in her mouth. She sells
them completely.
Is Run Away the first Harlan novel to feature a character named after you? A neurosurgeon from Mount Sinai!
Is there a character named after me? Yes, weird. He does like to chuck our names into his novels. I think it’s just to see if we’ve read them!
Nicola Shindler & Richard Fee, executive producers
What most excited you about Run Away as a potential series when you read Harlan’s novel?
Richard: It’s always been one of our favourites because it’s got such an emotional hook. That idea of a father and daughter – the opening scene in the park – and his quest to try and find her again and bring her back to the safety of the family. That’s something that we have always loved. I think audiences have always responded to the emotion in these Harlan thrillers. We hope it will be another good one.
Nicola: It feels a little bit different in that way as well. We always want to be challenging the audience and moving on. Making sure they are getting something fresh out of it each time.
Where did you get together with Danny Brocklehurst and Harlan Coben to start discussing ideas and story strands that could be added to the mix for an eight-part series?
Nicola: We were in New York because it was when Fool Me Once came out. We were combining going, ‘Oh my god, that’s doing very well’ and trying to concentrate on working on story.
Richard: We even had a glass of champagne, which is very unlike us.
What sort of positives came from the global success of Fool Me Once (Netflix biggest show of 2024, 12 billion viewing minutes) Does it give you the clout to tell even bigger, bolder stories with Netflix?
Nicola: I don’t think so. Each project is judged on its own merit. We get a great deal of respect
from Fool Me Once, but I don’t think any special treatment!
James Nesbitt had one big scene in Missing You but were you already thinking of him as a potential Simon Greene?
Nicola: Very early on we talked about him because we love him.
Richard: We’ve always wanted to keep working with Jimmy. We worked with him on Stay Close and the relationship there onscreen was just so heart-breaking. The emotional scenes were so brilliant, and he brings so much humour.
Nicola: Then when he came back for that cameo in Missing You, he reminded us how brilliant he was. Watching the rushes for Missing You we were all, ‘My god, we have to work with Jimmy again.’
What made Ruth Jones an exciting casting choice for Elena Ravenscroft?
Nicola: Because she had never done anything investigative before and most actors have. To see her work out a mystery. Also, because she is so clever. To let her show that cleverness onscreen was great. We love Elena as a character even though she is not in the book that much she is a very, very effective character. And just to have Ruth play someone so different from Nessa, so different from how an audience thinks of her right now, that was just too great to resist.
Richard: Ruth has got such a huge amount of empathy as well. The thought of her and Jimmy onscreen together was very exciting. That partnership is great when they finally come together working towards the same goal.
Is the design of Run Away by production designer Vanessa Hawkins the most ambitious yet?
Richard: We try to be ambitious with every series. We love working with Vanessa. She did Missing You with us and worked with Nicola on Dead Hot, which is a series written by Charlotte Coben.
Nicola: Vanessa has got a brilliant eye, which can be very heightened but has got a grounded element to it, which is what I think works brilliantly in Harlan’s shows. We took from Fool Me Once the love for that massive house and we asked her to push her locations to be as extraordinary as they could be. And everything must be beautiful as well as real.
Which locations have been real finds?
Richard: The house for the cult was quite hard to find because that is something that is so particular. It has got to have a big impact onscreen. It has got to feel very visually distinctive but there is a danger that it could feel too heightened or too unbelievable, so it was trying to find that balance. What we found is terrific and works very well. We are still working in the northwest and finding brilliant new locations.
Nicola: The Marinduque estate was hard to find. To get the right balance between interesting story and a place that does feel dark. The park for the opening scene looks beautiful.
Richard: That was very important because in the book it’s Central Park, so we had got a lot to live up to, but Sefton Park feels very iconic for that big hook scene.
Nicola: Even meeting in a café in episode seven, which is just meant to be a park café. Vanessa has really elevated it by making an old monument into a café, which it normally isn’t. Things like that just lift it beautifully.
What does writer Charlotte Coban [daughter of author, creator and exec producer Harlan Coben] bring?
Nicola: Both of us loved when Charlotte came to meetings as a story editor and because she then gave me the script for Dead Hot, which I started working on separately, I could see what a strong story mind she has but always a very individual, authored voice. She just felt like a very good addition to Danny Brocklehurst. Danny is incredibly grounded as a writer, which is what works so well with pitting him with Harlan and his kind of ‘reach for the stars’ mentality. Throwing in Charlotte’s mad sense of humour she pushes us to be weird in a way I really like, and I think the audience responds to all that weirdness. Lots of our weird touches come from Charlotte. The whole opening of Fool Me Once came from a conversation with Charlotte.
Richard: Also, The Stranger with the llama’s head. That was all Charlotte.
Nicola: When we are all sat there as old people thinking, ‘What could it be?’ Charlotte just comes in with something so insane that she has read on the internet or Reddit. It’s normally Reddit. It just brings the whole story to life. We are working on lots of ideas with Charlotte. And I want her voice onscreen as well as writing episodes for these shows because it is uncontainable in a good way.
Are there any unsung heroes on this production?
Richard: Casting director Orla Maxwell has been a very important relationship to us. We’ve worked with Orla from the first Harlan series that we did, The Five, for Sky. She is just brilliant. She knows all the best people and is lovely and understands the story and the scripts well.
Nicola: And she is very, very good at pushing us towards diversity, which is always very important.
Richard: Producers Guy Hescott and Will McDonagh. Guy is someone we have worked with over the past few years. He produced Missing You and then The Red King with Nicola. He is lovely to work with and a very calm presence who brings people together. Will, who was a brilliant script editor and script executive, has stepped up to produce the middle block and across the last block as well. He has been terrific. He has got a brilliant story brain and again everybody loves working with him. He is very calm, very supportive. We want to be doing more with both.
CREATOR: Harlan Coben
LEAD WRITER: Danny Brocklehurst (Fool Me Once, Brassic, Ten Pound Poms, Shameless)
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Harlan Coben, Nicola Shindler, Richard Fee, Danny Brocklehurst
SERIES PRODUCER: Guy Hescott (Without Sin, Missing You)
PRODUCER: Will McDonagh (Significant Other)
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Charlotte Coben (Dead Hot, Fool Me Once)
These interviews are edited from Q & A’s conducted by Netflix.
Pippa Considine
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