David Tennant's 3-Part Masterpiece BBC Thriller Is The Perfect Harlan Coben Replacement

Published Sep 21, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

While it is tough to replicate the exact appeal of the prolific mystery writer Harlan Coben's many Netflix shows, one BBC thriller recaptures the most important elements of the author’s style fairly well. Fans of the legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie have no idea how lucky they are. Since Christie essentially shaped the modern murder mystery blueprint, alongside authors like Dorothy L. Sayers, it has never been tough to find shows and movies that recapture the feel of her work.

Viewers who want a cozy murder mystery in the vein of the Miss Marple novels need look no further than classic network TV procedurals like Diagnosis Murder and Murder She Wrote. Anyone who prefers Christie’s Poirot stories, where a quirky, unconventional but brilliant sleuth is underestimated by the killers and defeats them as a result, can check out Columbo, the Knives Out movies, or Peacock’s Poker Face. Even fans of Christie’s darkest whodunits like And Then There Were None have darker thrillers like Sharp Objects to sate their appetite.

Spare a thought, then, for fans of the legendary thriller author Harlan Coben. Although he has been a fixture on the bestseller list since back in 1990, Coben never received an adaptation until director Guillame Canet’s French thriller Tell No One in 2006. That movie proved such a modest success that the next Coben adaptation wouldn’t arrive until 2015, with the French series No Second Chance. Luckily, in the interim, the BBC series Broadchurch did a pretty great job of replicating Coben’s appeal.

Broadchurch Has Harlan Coben’s Blend of British Settings And Small Town Whodunit Drama

With a stacked cast that includes David Tennant, Olivia Colman, Jodie Whitaker, and Jonathan Bailey, Broadchurch has no shortage of stars in its lineup. Set in the fictional Dorset town of the title, the show focuses on the mysterious death of a young boy and its impact on the community. Heavily influenced by the seminal ABC classic Twin Peaks, Broadchurch is as much a study of a small town where everyone has a secret to hide as it is a conventional police procedural series.

If this sounds familiar, that could be because Coben’s bestselling mystery novels also take the same approach. Many of the author’s best books read like a blend of small town sop opera and murder mystery, delving into the lives and juicy secrets of numerous townspeople to help solve a murder at the center of the story. In Broadchurch and Coben’s books alike, no one can be trusted, and a central killing is often just a spark that ignites a powder keg of other explosive secrets and lies.

Broadchurch’s Realism And Detective Protagonist Make The Series Stand Out From Harlan Coben Imitators

That said, fans of the author’s books shouldn’t assume that Broadchurch is identical to Netflix’s Coben adaptations like The Woods, The Stranger, Run Away, or I Will Find You. There are a few pivotal distinctions between them, but luckily, these all serve to make Broadchurch a unique enough series to feel fresh and original for fans of Coben’s work.

Both Broadchurch and most of Coben’s books explore small-town secrets in a setting where one disastrous event has a ripple effect that exposes many secrets. However, Broadchurch is a slower, darker series, with fewer cliffhangers and more of a focus on grounded realism. Where Coben’s books tend to center on amateur sleuths with no professional credentials, Broadchurch instead focuses on two dedicated career cops.

In many ways, Broadchurch is as similar to Netflix’s four-season masterpiece The Killing as it is to a Coben show, with its patient pacing, its grim storyline, and a committed character study at its core. However, this just proves that the BBC’s Harlan Coben alternative Broadchurch is both similar enough to satisfy fans of the cult author, and also different enough to feel fresh, surprising, and original to his readers.