Four episodes, a vicar and a death row inmate: Steven Moffat's Inside Man is the Harlan Coben fix you haven't watched
If you devour Harlan Coben’s mystery books and shows, David Tennant’s impressive Netflix thriller should be your next stop.
Here’s something for everyone out there who burns through a Harlan Coben Netflix thriller in a weekend and then immediately wonders what to do with themselves: there’s another (slightly overlooked) series waiting for you and, no exaggeration, it might just be even more unsettling than the usual “family in peril” stuff. You want tense, you want clever, you want David Tennant making very questionable decisions? Try Inside Man. Just don’t expect to relax.
Tennant, Tucci & The Vicar With a Secret
So, Inside Man landed on the BBC and Netflix courtesy of Steven Moffat (the very man who co-created Sherlock and spent years mind-bending Doctor Who fans). And he’s reeled in a proper cast: David Tennant plays Harry Watling, a vicar whose main priority, on the surface, is keeping his teenage son Ben out of trouble. Then there’s Stanley Tucci as Jefferson Grieff, a death row inmate in the US, sitting in a cell for murdering his wife. You read that right: vicar vs. convicted killer, with a math tutor and a USB drive dropped straight into the mix.
The story starts going properly sideways when Janice Fife (Dolly Wells), who is tutoring Ben, stumbles on some very dodgy material on a memory stick and decides Ben is responsible. Harry then does… well, exactly what you’d expect a Coben protagonist to do: makes everything infinitely worse with every attempt to fix the situation. Genuinely skin-crawling at points.
Inside Man only has four episodes from start to finish.
Unravelling the Mess
If you’ve seen I Will Find You (that’s Coben’s big June 2026 Netflix drop with Sam Worthington), the similarities jump out. Both shows fixate on basically good blokes forced into fate’s woodchipper, all for the sake of their kids. Worthington’s David Burroughs spends years in lockup after being framed for killing his own son. Tennant’s Harry isn’t the accused himself – at least, not initially – but watching him, all saintly robe and simmering panic, you’re instantly reminded of Coben’s well-meaning dads tipped into crisis mode.
That’s the fun of it, isn’t it? Moffat’s not really doing anything wildly new – parental fear, everyday settings, one dark secret – but he’s absolutely nailing that Coben energy where the people you could bump into at Tesco turn out to be sitting on a mountain of secrets. And if you’re tired of Coben’s miniseries being a little dragged out: this one has four episodes. You could realistically finish it before dinner.
The Line-Up
- David Tennant as Harry Watling (vicar, possibly not the wholesome sort)
- Stanley Tucci as Jefferson Grieff (death row, very sharp mind, tells everyone exactly what he thinks of them)
- Dolly Wells as Janice Fife (probably one of the worst days of her life happening in real time)
- Lydia West as Beth Davenport (reporter, likes a mess)
- Louis Oliver as Ben Watling (teenager, gets dragged in before he knows what’s hit him)
Here’s the odd thing: Stanley Tucci is fantastic as the silver-tongued prisoner, but it’s Harry who feels like he could have stumbled out of a Coben novel, all internal struggle and spiralling damage control. And unlike your usual troubled-dad-with-a-past, Harry’s still a bit of a blank right up to the ending. If you like your mysteries tight, your protagonists slightly enigmatic, and you’ve got a few spare hours – queue it up.