Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Stay Close’ On Netflix, A Harlan Coben Story About A Cold Case That Ties Together A Cop, A Former Stripper And A Photojournalist

Despite the fact that Harlan Coben‘s novels all take place in the U.S. — in fact, they mostly take place in his home state of New Jersey — the Netflix adaptations made under his development contract with the streamer have all taken place in Europe. It definitely adds a bit of a cultural difference to the stories, even the shows that have taken place in the UK. It also shows that Coben’s stories translate into different cultures and languages, because they play on universal fears and emotions. The latest adaptation, Stay Close, involves three people who have histories they’d rather forget, all tied together by one missing man.

STAY CLOSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of a mysterious statue in the middle of the woods. It is a long, skinny face.

The Gist: A man is celebrating something at a strip club called Vixens, then he runs into the adjacent woods.

We then cut to a suburban scene. Megan Pierce (Cush Jumbo) is living a bucolic domestic life with her fiancé Dave Shaw (Daniel Francis) and their daughters Jordan (Dylan Francis), Laura (Tallulah Byrne) and Kayleigh (Bethany Antonia). After 16 years together, Megan and Dave are finally going to get married, and the friends at her “hen party” are amazed at how passionate the two of them still are. When she gets back, she sees a note with the name “Cassie” on it, which makes her stop in her tracks.

Meanwhile, DS Michael Broome (James Nesbitt) and his partner DC Erin Cartwright (Jo Joyner) are given a missing-person case to pursue, the disappearance of a young man named Carlton Flynn (Connor Calland). As they talk to the man’s parents, Broome realizes that he disappeared 17 years to the day after Stewart Green (Rod Hunt), a family man, also disappeared. Cartwright thinks Broome is trying too hard to make a connection to a case he never was able to resolve.

At a tennis match for her middle daughter, Megan is spotted by a mysterious woman. They agree to meet the next day. At the same time, a photojournalist named Ray Levine (Richard Armitage), who now does bar mitzvah and other event photos, is mugged for his camera after a gig. But he backed the photos up to the cloud before he got mugged, and going through them, he sees pictures he took in the woods the night before, including something he didn’t see before, a shadowy figure of a young man running from something.

Megan meets with the woman, Lorraine (Sarah Parish), who she knew in her previous life as “Cassie.” As much as Megan decided to leave her old life 17 years prior, Lorraine knows that people are never completely out of it. She’s there to warn her that Stewart Green, whom Megan thinks is dead, has resurfaced. Megan, trying to figure out if its true, visits his house and poses as a potential buyer to talk to his wife. Then she goes and visits Harry Sutton (Eddie Izzard), a a lawyer who used to represent the strip club where she used to work; he’s in a seedy abandoned storefront office, strung out on heroin, protected by thugs that try to rob Megan. However, Megan calls on her old skills to kick their asses and escape.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While the story is a bit different, the vibe of Stay Close is pretty much the same as Harlan Coben’s other Netflix adaptations, most notably Safe.

Our Take: The story of Stay Close, based on Coben’s 2012 novel, holds as much intrigue as we’ve seen from a Coben adaptation, mainly because it’s a three-sided mystery. Megan, Ray, and DS Broome are all connected to each other via Stewart Green, and Coben, who adapted his novel for the series, gives just enough clues in the first episode to tantalize viewers without frustrating them.

We know Megan used to work at Vixens, which was also frequented by Broome in his harder-drinking days while he investigated the Green disappearance. We also know that Ray and Megan were connected romantically before she left to start a new life. That’s a lot of information for a first episode where the writers are trying to hold information back to stoke intrigue, which indicates to us that what’s to come, as the three sides of this story start to interact with each other.

It helps that the three main players are by actors giving top notch performances. Jumbo is one of those actors whose face conveys more than enough emotion to fill a scene, and Nesbitt has the world-weary cop role down to a T. Armitage’s Ray is the least developed of the three, but we know that Armitage has done a fine job in the past. All of them, plus a fine supporting cast, help to make this puzzle one that’s worth following.

Like in all the other Coben adaptations, there are some cheeky flourishes that maybe aren’t necessary, like the fact that Broome’s partner, DC Cartwright, is also his ex-wife. And we hope that Megan’s family gets embroiled in this mystery — there are signs of that, as we’ll mention below — and not just be there as props to wonder just what her life was like before Dave came along.

Sex and Skin: Even the scenes at Vixens are pretty tame, despite the show’s TV-MA rating.

Parting Shot: Megan’s oldest daughter, Kayleigh, is sporting the pendant that Flynn’s parents say never left his neck. So Megan’s family is more involved than we initially think.

Sleeper Star: You don’t hire Eddie Izzard to play a guy who just sits in a chair being strung out. We’re looking forward to seeing what he does with Harry Sutton once he sobers up and helps Megan get to the bottom of Stewart’s status.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Flynn’s parents ask Broome and Cartwright if they have kids, Cartwright says she has a young child, and Broome awkwardly says, “My ex-wife didn’t want any.” That felt a bit of a bitter way to say it, until we learn in the next scene that the now-work-partners used to be married.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Stay Close benefits from fine performances and a story that gives just enough clues in the first episode to keep viewers intrigued and — more importantly — not frustrated with purposely obtuse writing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Stay Close On Netflix