Stay Close’ Review: Netflix’s Latest Harlan Coben Series Is a Forgettable Waste of Cush Jumbo’s Talents
Tambay Obenson December 31, 2021 5:00PM EST

Rooted in noir tradition, the suspense thriller of the “your past is catching up with you” variety is well-worn. So how does one reframe it in a way that feels at once fresh while also familiar, so as not to alienate increasingly impatient audiences? Therein lies the challenge for any new entries into the space, and one that Netflix’s latest Harlan Coben collaboration, “Stay Close,” ultimately fails, despite a decorated cast led by Cush Jumbo and James Nesbitt, even if their performances are the best thing about the series.


In “Stay Close,” Jumbo stars as Megan, a suburban mother of three whose previous life as a stripper named Cassie, along with the lives of those she thought she’d left in the past, come back to haunt her, threatening to ruin the perfect present-day reality she’s created for herself. The history summarized: once a popular dancer, one of Cassie’s customers (Stewart Green, played by Rod Hunt) became dangerously obsessed with her, an obsession that went to extremes when she began dating an ambitious photographer named Ray (Richard Armitage). Green ends up mysteriously dead, and Cassie vanishes.


But is Green really dead? And if he is, did Cassie (or Ray) kill him? Answer to questions that haunt almost every episode come eventually. Spoken of but never seen or heard throughout, Green may as well be “The One Who Shall Not Be Named,” whose spirit looms large. “He’s back,” the series repeatedly informs us, and he’s looking for Cassie. Once the victim of Green’s violence, traumatized, she skipped town; although, because the Blackpool-set series’ geography isn’t adequately defined, it’s unclear whether she simply changed her name and moved a few streets over, or to another borough, jurisdiction, city, or even country. It’s an unfortunate oversight, one that weighs on any comprehension of the series’ stakes.

Cassie’s exit plan is hasty, meaning she ghosts everyone she knows, including love of her life Ray, and Lorraine (Sarah Parish), a co-worker and confidant.

Seventeen years later, Cassie is living as Megan, a mother of three children engaged to be married to Dave (Daniel Francis), a burly chap with a secret of his own; Ray is a mess, slumming as paparazzi for hire; and Lorraine has cancer, with only a few years to live.

Quickly introduced are hard-bitten Detective Broome (Nesbitt) and his partner Cartwright (Jo Joyner), an ex-couple now investigating a string of missing men cases, Green’s included. (By the way, Broome also happens to be caught up in a fling with Lorraine — a relationship that becomes pivotal to the main investigation.)

There’s Harry (Eddie Izzard), a shady, drug-using associate of Megan’s, and possibly her legal counsel; Kayleigh (Bethany Antonia), Megan’s oldest child, whose prying inevitably puts her in harm’s way; Del Flynn (Ross Boatman), a father determined to find his missing son while he tends to his comatose hospitalized wife; Barbie and Ken (Poppy Gilbert and Hyoie O’Grady), a pair of bounty hunters hired by Flynn, whose sadistic methods — amid sudden flippant song and dance routines — place them in an entirely different series; and Goldberg (Jack Shalloo), a high-ranking copper to whom Broome and Cartwright report, also with a secret of his own that has bearing on the cases his detectives are working to solve.

Plenty is certainly afoot. However, contrary to what seems like popular belief, unnecessarily convoluted, intertwined subplots propelled by flashbacks, MacGuffins, dei ex machinis, and the misadventures of a multitude of characters, don’t innately translate to intrigue or suspense.

There’s more tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s single location three-hander “Rope” (1948), or Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s play “Death and the Maiden” (1994), than “Stay Close” can wring out of its tiring cliffhangers and dangling threads, scattered throughout an eight-episode season.

It isn’t set in a single location, but a club called Vipers is central to the main plot. Given the type of male clientele the establishment typically attracts, it’s a name so crude that any early expectations of a clever, delicately complex, distinct story, style, or structure should vanish just as swiftly as Cassie fled. And getting through the season becomes a slog.


The ongoing investigation into the whereabouts of several missing men steadies “Stay Close,” especially as bodies start to pile up, including that of would-be rapist Carlton Flynn, contemptible father-to-be Guy Tatum, and others, all last seen during the local Carnival (“an easy night to make someone disappear”) in consecutive years. This eventual realization by Detectives Broome and Cartwright suggests a pattern. Perhaps it’s the work of a serial killer, they consider.

One suspect after another is alibied, except for Ray, who leaves enough of a trail that makes it difficult to exonerate himself. But is he the killer? Who knows. Or maybe the question to ask is whether any of it matters. Jarring tonal shifts are more like inquiries into whether to take the series seriously or not. Although, its schlocky, numbingly conspicuous score is always present to dictate how the viewer should feel.

There’s an attempt at commentary on the vilification of sex workers, gender-based violence committed against women and girls, and vigilante justice, all of which could’ve benefited from further script rewrites. But, ultimately, “Stay Close” sticks to every cliché native to the hackneyed story of a protagonist’s past coming back to haunt them, disrupting a newly created idyllic existence; just when Cassie thought she was out, they pull her back in!

It’s the kind of series made for binging, leaping from one cliffhanger to the next like a trapeze artist without the agility and lyricism. And while it’s atmospheric, it simply isn’t compelling enough to become addictive. But fans of previous Harlan Coben Netflix collaborations should ease comfortably into this one.

In August 2018, the author inked a five-year deal with Netflix to bring 14 of his novels to the streamer as series, and “Stay Close” follows other Coben-created Netflix originals “Safe” (2018), and, in 2020, “The Stranger,” “The Woods” and “The Innocent” — each a middling breeze that’s content at being nothing more. “Stay Close” doesn’t attempt to be anything different, and is equally forgettable.


There is some sense of satisfaction to be derived from the last two episodes as it clunkily solves its many mysteries, even if it’s of a self-congratulatory nature for making it that far into the series. But it takes a laborious path to get there, and by the time the gift is fully unwrapped, in a lengthy, exposition-heavy confession, the surprise is, if not anticlimactic, then just plain silly. It’s the kind of tabloid fodder that the Lifetime Network’s programs are made of, with Netflix’s imprint.

Grade D+

Stay Close (Harlan Coben series) – Netflix Review
Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Dec 31, 2021 | Read Time 3 min.

STAY CLOSE on Netflix is a new Harlan Coben miniseries. A crime, thriller, mystery with eight episodes. If you’ve enjoyed the previous adaptions of his novels, then you’ll like this one. Read our full Stay Close series review here!

STAY CLOSE is a new Netflix series adapted from a Harlan Coben novel. There have already been quite a few of these thriller-mystery series in various languages.


I’ve enjoyed all of the previous adaptions (to varying degrees) and I can’t imagine any fans of the previous adaptions won’t find this one entertaining.

Continue reading our Stay Close mini-series review below. All eight episodes of the series are out on Netflix now.

Another strong cast
One thing the Netflix adaptions of Harlan Coben books tend to have in common are strong casts. Stay Close is definitely no exception. Neither are the international productions which you should really check out. Especially the Polish adaption The Woods is worth checking out.

Getting back to the cast of Stay Close, it’s headlined by three actors portraying the three main characters we end up following. Or rather, we are ultimately following the story, of course, but through the experiences of three different characters; A soccer mom, a photojournalist, and a homicide detective.

The definitive main character is portrayed by Cush Jumbo (The Good Fight, Torchwood). She’s the current soccer mom with the past of a “showgirl” (or stripper, to be plain). This means she also has a new name now but used to go by “Cassie”.

Stay Close (Harlan Coben series) – Netflix Review
The photojournalist is played by Richard Armitage who many might know from The Hobbit trilogy. However, genre fans might also recognize him from The Stranger, Space Sweepers, the horror movie The Lodge (2019), and the TV series Hannibal.

Finally, the homicide detective is played by James Nesbitt. He was also in the Hobbit trilogy and has played a detective in a whole slew of awesome crime series. From The Missing to Bloodlands and he is currently filming Suspect.

All three main actors give solid performances. I found Cush Jumbo a bit tame (or boring) at first, but there was a point to this.

Watch the Stay Close miniseries on Netflix now!
While the novel this Netflix series is based on was written by Harlan Coben, the scripts for the series were written by Daniel Brocklehurst and Lawrence Kasdan. Both have very interesting backgrounds which are obvious from just a quick look at their IMDb pages.

Daniel Brocklehurst previously wrote on the Harlan Coben series The Stranger (which also starred Richard Armitage) and Safe. The latter starred Michael C. Hall of Dexter. Speaking of everyone’s favorite serial killer, make sure you check out Dexter: New Blood which is airing these weeks.


The other writer, Lawrence Kasdan, has a different, but very interesting resume. Mostly consisting of Star Wars productions. In fact, Lawrence Kasdan’s screenwriting debut was The Empire Strikes Back (1980) followed up by the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Later, Lawrence Kasdan went on to write the screenplay for The Bodyguard (1992) which is definitely a more relevant reference for this new Netflix series. As with all Harlan Coben series, this one is good fun, full of twists and turns, plus most episodes end on cliffhangers. Do check it out!

Stay Close is out on Netflix from December 31, 2021.

Details
Writers: Daniel Brocklehurst, Lawrence Kasdan, Harlan Coben (novel)
Directors: Lindy Heymann, Daniel O’Hara
Stars: Cush Jumbo, James Nesbitt, Richard Armitage, Sarah Parish, Eddie Izzard, Rod Hunt, Jo Joyner

Plot
With trademark thrills, gripping suspense and secrets of past crimes beginning to unravel, Stay Close questions how much you really know someone. Four people each conceal dark secrets from those closest to them; Megan (Jumbo) a working mother of three, Ray (Armitage), a once-promising documentary photographer, Broome (Nesbitt) a detective unable to let go of a missing person’s cold case, and Lorraine (Parish), an old friend of Megan’s. As the past comes back to haunt them, threatening to ruin their lives and the lives of those around them, what will be their next move?

Stay Close review – another lightning-fast, highly bingeable Harlan Coben thriller
close enough

close enough
December 31, 2021
Jonathon Wilson

Summary

Stay Close is paced like a rocket and is littered with the litany of crime cliches that always blight these Harlan Coben adaptations, making for a fine binge-watch as we enter the new year.

so many of them and has no plans to slow down any time soon. We had the Spanish-language The Innocent in April of this year, and the English-language The Stranger before that, and possibly a couple of others in-between that I’ve forgotten about. They mostly all work the same way, full of secret lives, shady pasts, and one cliff-hanger after another. But even by the well-established standards of these things, Stay Close is particularly bonkers, a lightning-fast, highly binge-able thriller that works mostly by sensory overload and never quite giving a straight answer. Happy New Year!

Anyway, here’s the setup to this one: Megan (Cush Jumbo) is a seemingly happy woman with a nice house, husband, and kids, but who nonetheless has a Dark and Secret Past which arrives literally on her doorstep in the form of a note addressed to “Cassie”. The sender is Lorraine (Sarah Parish), an old associate of Megan’s who reveals that currently missing Stewart Green is “back” and looking for Cassie. But Stewart should be dead! Thus begins a twisty-turny mystery that, within the span of one episode, also ropes in Detective Broome (James Nesbitt), who was never able to find Stewart and is currently investigating the similar disappearance of Carlton Flynn, who seems to have gone missing from the same place 17 years later to the day, a seedy photographer named Ray (Richard Armitage, who was also in The Stranger), who has inadvertently captured images of Carlton in a mysterious spot in the woods and who might have a past-life connection to Megan/Cassie, and even Megan’s oldest daughter, who might have been one of the last people to see Carlton before he went missing. Blimey!

Since there are eight episodes of Stay Close, it might come as a surprise to learn that all of this is established in just one of them. Or, I suppose, it might not. Either way, this is a mystery with a lot going on, and it’s so obvious that basically everything we’ve been told so far is going to be relevant in the long-term that it can feel a little breathless trying to keep it all in some kind of order. The fact that there even is a discernible order is a red flag to me, too. That I can more or less piece together what happened and to whom by the end of the first episode suggests we’re probably heading down more than one rabbit hole in the near future, and who knows if even a show with this solid of a cast can sustain that level of soapy genre madness.

It is a solid cast, though, even if the fluctuating tone makes it difficult to take James Nesbitt’s apparently quite promiscuous detective all that seriously. But a frantic Cush Jumbo is a sturdy emotional anchor, and Armitage is doing good work as a down-on-his-luck photographer with hidden layers. It’s obvious that everyone is connected, and that they’re connected at least in part by an eerie stretch of woodland that we keep visiting both in flashbacks and the present day. There’s more than enough – perhaps too much – mystery here to sustain an eager binge-watching crowd, and, let’s be frank, this is going to get one. Whether or not it’ll all conclude in a satisfying way is mostly beside the point. It’s about the journey, not the destination, and the journey takes place at 100mph. Buckle up.

You can stream Stay Close exclusively on Netflix.

Stay Close review – your new Netflix binge-watch? This irresistible thriller

James Nesbitt is a brooding detective in this Harlan Coben thriller, in which Cush Jumbo is dragged back into her shady old life. You won’t be able to turn it off

Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Fri 31 Dec 2021 01.00 EST

Fourteen of author Harlan Coben’s 31 novels, we are told, are due to be adapted for Netflix. Your mileage may vary, of course, but as I have a barely satiable appetite for bingeable thrillers, I see this as more promise than threat.

Last year we had The Stranger, an adaptation of Coben’s 2015 bestseller, which leapt from cliffhanger to cliffhanger to tell the increasingly baroque-slash-demented tale of a husband (Richard Armitage) who discovers from a mysterious stranger that his wife faked her pregnancy and miscarriage before she disappeared. Dum-dum-DAH.

Another is now here and Stay Close promises more of almost exactly the same – including Richard Armitage, who is now seedy photographer Ray and, by the end of the opening episode, about to become firmly tied into the main plot. This centres on Megan (Cush Jumbo), whose idyllic life, loving family and perfect kitchen are evidence that she is the keeper of a Secret Past that will soon rear its ugly head and threaten everything she holds dear.

And so it proves. Carlton Flynn, a young man in a distinctive necklace, goes missing from about the same place as another man, Stewart Green, did 17 years ago to the day. The latter is the only case Detective Broome (James Nesbitt) has ever failed to solve. He assuaged the pain by sleeping with Stewart’s mum, which may or may not become relevant later (though I feel it’s only fair to point out that in Cobenworld, most things do)..
Megan gets home after a night out to find a card on her doorstep addressed to “Cassie”. Her old name! But how?! “Everybody’s findable these days,” the card sender tells her when they meet, which is apparently explanation enough. But who?! It’s Lorraine (Sarah Parish), one of the people left behind when Cassie fled her old life. But why?! Lorraine wants to warn her that Stewart, apparently the reason Cassie wished to flee said old life, is back. But he can’t be, gasps our heroine – “He’s dead!”

It’s possible her certainty has something to do with the flashbacks she keeps having to a slashed and bloody presumed-corpse. Before she departs, Lorraine – who, by the way, works at the Vipers club where Carlton was last seen – gives her pal the plastic engagement ring pledged by a man whose heart she broke by leaving.

Who could this be? Apropos of nothing, we turn to Ray again. He is mugged for his camera. But he has already uploaded his latest pictures to the cloud. He turns out to have inadvertently captured images of what might be Carlton’s final moments in the local woods (through which, if the flashbacks are anything to go by, Cassie herself fled). While he thinks about what that might mean, he flicks through some old photo albums. They are full of pictures of him with Cassie. But wait! There is still time for one last scene – of Megan’s oldest daughter lying on her bed and toying with a pendant round her neck. You’ll never guess whose it is. Dum-dum-DAH! See you for the next episode, plus the six after that – and there’s no point pretending otherwise.