Harlan Coben novels are always an experience. But when the bestseller author works with three long-time friends and creative collaborators to move their setting from the U.S. to the U.K. and adapt his stories for the screen, they are looking to make them into an entirely different experience altogether. Case in point: Netflix‘s 2024 hit Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan, Adeel Akhtar, Dino Fetscher, Richard Armitage and Joanna Lumley, which was the streamer’s biggest show of the year and garnered 12 billion viewing minutes.
“I call us The Core Four,” Coben tells THR on a Zoom call, where he is joined by the three others he’s referring to: star producer Nicola Shindler, CEO and executive producer at Quay Street Productions, the production firm, part of ITV Studios, that has been producing the hit Coben series; Quay Street head of drama and executive producer Richard Fee, and writer Danny Brocklehurst. “That’s my name for this group. We’ve now worked together for 10, almost 11 years.”
Coben recalls the first meeting they had in the U.S. “Nicola and Richard came for the first time and sat at this very table where I’m sitting now and we met,” he recalls. “And it’s been a tremendous honor and pleasure.”
He underlines the sentiment as he picks up a copy of his latest novel, where he has put his admiration for his longtime collaborators in writing: “This is my new book, Nobody’s Fool [which was released on March 15]. And the dedication is actually to Nicola, Danny and Richard. ‘I dedicate this book to the other members of The Core Four, Nicola Schindler, Richard Fee, Danny Brocklehurst — great partners and better friends.”
The Core Four have worked together on hits like Netflix’s Missing You, Fool Me Once, Safe, The Stranger, and Stay Close, as well as The Five for Sky, with their latest, Lazarus, coming out on Amazon Prime Video this October, and Run Away, which is set to hit Netflix at a date yet to be unveiled.
Coben calls Shindler “the captain of this ship,” adding that the group benefits immeasurably from Nicola’s love of television. “[She] is sort of our boss,” he says. “She really loves TV. She loves making TV. She loves watching TV. She likes talking about TV. And I think that’s one of the driving forces — her enthusiasm and love.”
So how does Shindler approach turning popular novels full of twists and turns into popular TV series? “We don’t ever think about how we’re going to appeal to people who read those books and people who don’t. We just want to tell a brilliant story,” she tells THR. “And we want to tell stories that make people watch every single episode and are invested in the stories and enjoy them. So it’s about entertainment as well.”
The two writers team up on the adaptations, she explains. “Harlan and Danny combine. Danny’s so aware of the structure of television and how he wants to put those characters on screen.”
But the Core Four also go beyond the books, with one of the main challenges being transferring words on a page to the visual medium of TV. “All four of us talk about what’s not in the book that we need to be on television because sometimes you just have to do a bit more,” Shindler shares. “Harlan can do a lot in characters’ heads. So we spend a long time talking about how to dramatize those moments. But it’s also about making sure that the story never dips in any of the episodes. Me and Richard are pushed by Harlan and Danny to keep making sure that every episode grabs the audience, and every episode has a hook that will make them come back and hooks through all the story as well.”
Echoes Coben: “I don’t think we worry about fidelity to the book. We worry more about if this is a good TV show. The book is a different experience, as far as I’m concerned. We just want to make both as entertaining as possible. I don’t worry if there’s any crossover or any of that. If your goal in watching a series is to repeat the book, we’re not the team for you. I don’t want to give you the exact same experience again. What would be the point?”
One famous deviation saw the “stranger” in the novel The Stranger become a woman, played by Hannah John-Kamen, in the series. “I just thought that the dynamic in that very first scene when the stranger whispers into Richard Armitage’s ear was a little more mysterious with a woman,” Coben explains. “There’s a difference between a book and a TV series because you’re seeing it visually instead of in your head. It works very differently. So when we thought about it on screen, we just thought that was a better visual. These things happen very organically. You can’t force that stuff.”
Casting is another key ingredient for the Core Four’s success formula, and it is typically handled by casting expert Orla Maxwell.
Run Away‘s James Nesbitt, for example, has starred in Coben series before, as has Richard Armitage. “We want the best actor for the role,” Shindler highlights. “But there are some people who are just so perfect for this kind of material. And Jimmy is perfect for this character in Run Away. So when we were all talking about the character, we all arrived at the same place knowing that we enjoy working with him, but also that he is able to portray emotion and warmth at heightened states of storytelling, and that’s what we need for this character. And that’s not something that every actor can do.”
Also, the members of the Netflix U.K. team “very much want us to put a really strong British cast on screen,” she adds. “So that’s what we look for. Harlan doesn’t always know the actors but he watches show reels and episodes to see them.”
That was what the team did for the casting of Welsh Gavin and Stacey star Ruth Jones. “I always do a deep dive into what else people have done. And that’s what I did when they mentioned her name,” Coben recalls. “A lot of times I rely on Nicola, Richard and Danny for that initial thought. And then you fall in love with them on your own and see exactly the potential that they can bring to the part.”
In the case of Jones, “I got showreels and Gavin and Stacey, obviously, and some other stuff,” Coben shares. “We also love to look for the potential of having somebody who is really great, but maybe hasn’t done anything quite like this. We did this, in a sense, with Absolutely Fabulous stars Jennifer Saunders [in The Stranger] and Joanna Lumley [in Fool Me Once]. Really good comics can often do great drama, and we thought it would be really interesting and fun to turn things a little bit on their head. I think when the British public sees Ruth in this role, they are going to be really pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if in her entire career she has done anything like this. And she’s just killing it.”
Speaking of humor, Coben says adding some levity is essential, whenever possible. “We always try to write with a comic touch,” he tells THR. “We hope the shows are also pretty funny, especially in the dialog, because life is funny, and the books, I hope, are also funny.”
Fee adds that empathy is also key, which is something actors with comedy experience can help with. “I think they’ve got an instinct to be quite empathetic,” he says. “That’s definitely the case with Ruth.”
He is also excited about Minnie Driver, Alfred Enoch and others being part of Run Away. About Driver, Coben says: “She’s a wonderful, talented actress, and we were just thrilled that she reacted so strongly to the material and really wanted to do it. And once she found out that Ruth Jones was on board, she was thrilled because she’s a real Gavin and Stacey super-fan.”
While Coben novels are be set in the U.S., the series are set in the U.K. — but the topics covered are not tied to any specific location, the Core Four point out.
“Harlan writes about families, relationships and love and all that kind of stuff,” says Brocklehurst. “Those are universal themes. So the stories translate. For example, something like The Stranger is set in the suburban U.S., [but] English suburbia is not so wildly different, except maybe in Harlan’s books they play more lacrosse or something, so we transferred that to [soccer]. The biggest difficulty, the one squabble Harlan and I always have is guns. But I never really find the adaptations difficult because our two countries are quite similar in some important ways.”
Adds Brocklehurst: “Although I’m glad I’ve not got their president. You can quote me!”
Most importantly, “we want these shows to be fun and entertaining,” Coben says. “We want it to be an escape, especially in today’s world.”
And one way of tapping into the sense of escape is to draw on universal themes that can transcend cultural barriers. “We never say, ‘Oh, this is too British, or this is too American.’ You have to be specific to be universal,” Coben argues. “Netflix has more than 300 million users in something like 190 countries. And over 100-something million watched Fool Me Once, for example. So I can’t sit there going, ‘I need to appeal to the people who are watching in Bulgaria.’ It just wouldn’t work as a story. But hopefully, the family stuff and the heart is more universal.”
The appeal of the Core Four’s output surely is universal, and the overtly commercial aspect of the shows can bring out the snob in some, Fee observes: “People sort of look down on popularity and something that’s got mainstream appeal — be it music, be it theater or whatever. All our shows have done well, but particularly Fool Me Once was so enormous. It’s the seventh-biggest show on Netflix of all time. It was the most-watched show of 2024 on any channel. The figures are absolutely mind-blowing. That speaks for itself really. If that was a Hollywood movie, it would have been a box office smash, and still some people are sniffy about it.”
The Core Four clearly love working together, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down.
Says Coben: “We have no egos and just enjoy working together. We never fight and always end up seeing things the same way. These three people are very special and important to me. And we really share a passion and a vision.”
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