We may earn a commission from links on this page.
I Will Find You is the 13th streaming series Netflix has adapted from a Harlan Coben novel, and there’s at least one more in the works (expected to team Coben with writer and TV super-producer David E. Kelley). Audiences seemingly can’t get enough: I Will Find You had one of the biggest streaming launches of the year, hitting numbers that place it near the top of any Netflix ranking from the past couple of years.
In the series, Sam Worthington plays David Burroughs, a man who is imprisoned for murdering his son, only to discover, five years later, that the child might still be alive. We do love a juicy mystery full of unreliable protagonists, jaw-dropping twists, and major personal drama, all of which I Will Find You offers in abundance—as do these 10 other shows (most of them not even adapted from Coben’s books).
The Undoing (2020)
David E. Kelley produced this twisty psychodrama, adapted from the Jean Hanff Korelitz bestseller You Should Have Known. Nicole Kidman stars as Grace Fraser, a Manhattan psychologist married to oncologist Jonathan (Hugh Grant). She keeps running into a woman named Elena, whose increasingly strange behavior disturbs Grace—more so after the woman is murdered. Things get really alarming when Grace tries to contact Jonathan, but he has disappeared, leading her into a web of secrets and lies spun entirely too close to home. The focus is less on a (maybe) false accusation than on the question of whom can you trust. Stream The Undoing on HBO Max.
The Beast in Me (2025)
Claire Danes plays grieving mother Aggie Wiggs, an author who is struggling with her next book in the wake of a tragedy. She decides to focus her frustrated attention on her neighbor, which is obviously a good idea and something you should definitely do, especially when the guy was previously accused of murdering his first wife. What could go wrong? The reliably fantastic Matthew Rhys plays Nile Jarvis, the maybe-murderer neighbor, who gets caught up in the mix when Abbie’s story becomes about way more than just one death. Stream The Beast in Me on Netflix.
Big Mouth (2022)
An addictive and twisty crime drama, this one’s mystery is a bit more operatic than the one in I Will Find You, but the show plays in a similar sandbox. Park Chang-ho (Lee Jong-suk) is a third-rate lawyer with a pretty atrocious success rate, nicknamed “Big Mouth” by his colleagues who see him as being all talk. He gets involved with a loan shark and loses a case involving a scam that he himself falls victim to, sending him to rock bottom, but then he gets a suspiciously timed big break: The mayor wants him to handle a high-profile case. In the process, he winds up mistaken by the police for a mysterious con man known as “Big Mouse,” and finds that the only way out is through if he’s to have any chance of clearing his name. Stream Big Mouth on Disney+ and Hulu.
The Innocent (2021)
Another Harlan Coben joint, this Spanish-language thriller follows the unexpectedly intertwined lives of two disparate people in Barcelona. Mateo Vidal (Mario Casas) accidentally killed a man years ago, a fact that comes back to haunt him when his new wife disappears. Meanwhile, Detective Lorena Ortiz (Alexandra Jiménez) is called upon to investigate the death of a nun. The two narratives eventually dovetail by way of several satisfyingly twisty-turny plot developments. Stream The Innocent on Netflix.
The Outsider (2020)
A brutal take on the trope of a lead character wrongly accused, this one poses an impossible mystery: A kid is horrifically murdered, and the evidence decisively points to Little League coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman). It’s an open-and-shut case—except that he was out of town at a conference while the murder was occurring, and even appeared on a news broadcast from miles away. As more tragedies pile up, it seems the threat isn’t entirely natural, which is hardly surprising, given this is an adaptation of one Stephen King’s most disturbing recent works. Cynthia Erivo co-stars as Holly Gibney, one of King’s recurring characters. Stream The Outsider on HBO Max.
Presumed Innocent (2024 – )
This David E. Kelley legal thriller (from the Scott Turow bestseller, previously adapted into a movie with Harrison Ford) focus a bit more on the courtroom bits than I Will Find You, but the setups are fairly similar: Jake Gyllenhaal is Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor charged with investigating the murder of his colleague. His attempts to steer the inquiry land him in hot water when it’s discovered that he’d been having an affair with the dead woman—and she was pregnant. Rusty quickly becomes the prime suspect, his case not at all helped by his previous shady behavior. Stream Presumed Innocent on Apple TV.
What do you think so far?
Defending Jacob (2020)
Based on the book by William Landay, this one’s premise is as clever as it is harrowing: In an upper-class Massachusetts suburb, Andy (Chris Evans) and Laurie (Michelle Dockery) learn that a classmate of their 14-year-old son has been murdered in a local park. What happens next is even more shocking: Their son is arrested for the killing. This one’s less about the wrongly accused and more about discovering what people will do to protect those they love—even if they (maybe) commit very bad deeds. The performances are solid, and the central mystery is compelling, leading up to a few jaw-dropping twists in the final act. Stream Defending Jacob on Apple TV.
The Night Of (2016)
Riz Ahmed stars as Naz Khan, a Pakistani-American student in NYC. After a night of partying, Naz wakes up to find that the woman he spent the night with has been stabbed to death in her bedroom. Fleeing the scene, he’s picked up on a traffic violation and quickly identified by witnesses. He even has the murder weapon in his coat pocket. Seems bad—but he’s mostly very sure that he had nothing to do with the killing, even if his memory’s full of holes. He doesn’t seem to have much of a defense, until thoroughly worn-out lawyer John Stone (John Turturro) takes the case with a “why not?” attitude, and finds himself drawn in. Stream The Night Of on HBO Max.
Surface (2022 – 2025)
The question of the extent to which we can trust our own instincts is explored more literally than usual in the story of Sophie Ellis (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who survives an (apparent) attempt at death by suicide and comes away missing huge chunks of her memory. She settles back into life with her husband, but is shocked to learn that she’d been having an affair and that her husband might have been embezzling money, among other sordid things. Everything turns on her deciding how much she can trust the men in her life over her own fragmented memories. Stream Surface on Apple TV.
The Staircase (2022)
Inspired by a documentary of the same name, The Staircase sidesteps true crime tropes by taking a nearly meta approach to its twisty story. Colin Firth stars as real-life crime novelist Michael Peterson alongside Toni Collette playing his wife and, perhaps, his victim, Kathleen, who dies following a fall down a flight of stairs. Peterson was convicted of murder, a charge later reduced to voluntary manslaughter, but there are a lot of lingering questions about the case, and the drama focuses on many of the tangential players—lawyers, family members, and the French film crew that turns up to document everything—offering a glimpse of what life might be like inside of such a whirlwind. Stream The Staircase on HBO Max.
