General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Stranger

The Stranger is a British eight-part thriller limited series created by Harlan Coben for Netflix, based on his 2015 novel of the same name, in which a mysterious woman tells family man Adam Price a secret about his wife and sets off a chain of disappearances and revelations.¹ It premiered globally on Netflix on January 30, 2020.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Eight-part limited series, TV-MA, episodes of roughly 60 minutes²
Premiere	January 30, 2020, worldwide on Netflix¹
Source	Harlan Coben's 2015 bestselling novel The Stranger³
Lead cast	Richard Armitage (Adam Price), Hannah John-Kamen (the Stranger), Siobhan Finneran (DS Johanna Griffin), Dervla Kirwan (Corinne Price)³
Production	Red Production Company (a STUDIOCANAL company); executive producers Nicola Shindler, Harlan Coben, Danny Brocklehurst, and Richard Fee¹^•³
Reception	87% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (23 reviews); 69% audience score; 7.2/10 on IMDb from about 71,000 users⁴^•²
Franchise position	The third collaboration between Red Production Company, Harlan Coben, and Netflix, after The Five and Safe (2018)³

Spoilers

Premise and cast

Adam Price (Richard Armitage) is a happily married father of two whose life is upended when a stranger, played by Hannah John-Kamen, tells him a secret about his wife Corinne (Dervla Kirwan). When Adam confronts her, she disappears, kick-starting a chain of events with potentially devastating results.¹^•³ The stranger exposes people's secrets across the town, dropping bombshells that shatter lives, and the series follows Adam's search for the truth alongside a parallel police investigation.³^•⁵

Siobhan Finneran plays DS Johanna Griffin, a police detective whose pragmatic approach to the case becomes deeply personal; Jennifer Saunders, in her first major dramatic role, plays Heidi, Johanna's closest friend.³ The supporting cast includes Stephen Rea as Martin, a retired police detective Adam turns to for help; Anthony Head as Edgar Price, a property-development CEO and Adam's father; Shaun Dooley as Doug Tripp; Paul Kaye as John Katz; and Kadiff Kirwan as Detective Constable Wesley Ross.³

Adaptation from the novel

The series makes substantial changes to Coben's 2015 novel. The book is set in the United States, moving from the New Jersey suburbs where the Price family lives to Ohio and Pennsylvania; the series condenses the action to the fictional area of Cedarfield in Greater Manchester, where it was filmed.⁶

The stranger's identity changed. In the novel the stranger is a man, Chris Taylor, who works with four accomplices to expose people's online secrets, some for moral reasons and some for money. In the series the character is a woman, and Coben said it was his own idea to make the change.⁶ The teenage subplot involving a party, a bonfire, and a decapitated alpaca was invented for the television version and does not appear in the book.⁶ A plot in which a character tries to force a homeowner out of a dilapidated terraced house for redevelopment was given to a different character than in the novel.⁶

Production

Netflix announced the cast and the start of shooting on March 6, 2019, with filming beginning that day in and around the United Kingdom, including Manchester.³ Daniel O'Hara served as lead director and Hannah Quinn as second block director, with Madonna Baptiste producing.³ The post-production company dock10 handled the full end-to-end post for the 8 x 60 minute 4K HDR series.⁷

The Stranger was the third Coben novel that Red Production Company, Coben, and Netflix adapted together, following The Five and the 2018 series Safe, which starred Michael C. Hall.³ UK industry coverage later credited the series as a model for transposing American thriller settings to European productions under the same Netflix arrangement.⁸

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds an 87% Tomatometer from 23 reviews, with the critics' consensus noting that if the series is not quite as addicting as its source material, it has a strong cast and enough tension to keep viewers engaged; the audience Popcornmeter score is 69%.⁴ IMDb users rate it 7.2 out of 10 from about 71,000 votes.² The series earned a 2021 Edgar Award nomination for Best Television Episode Teleplay and a Best Acting Ensemble nomination.⁹

Some critics found the mystery a web of disparate threads that made the series plot-heavy; others praised the pacing and the performances of Stephen Rea and Jennifer Saunders.¹⁰^•⁴ The series remains available on Netflix, including the ad-supported tier, and is classified by Netflix as a British limited-series drama based on a book.²^•¹¹

Other works titled The Stranger

The title has been used for several unrelated screen adaptations of Albert Camus's 1942 novella L'Étranger, including a film directed by François Ozon starring Benjamin Voisin as Meursault,¹² and for a 2022 Australian Netflix film based on a true undercover investigation, written and directed by Thomas M. Wright and starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris.¹³ A separate 2020 Quibi drama series of the same name, created by Veena Sud and starring Maika Monroe and Dane DeHaan, is a distinct work.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Adapted and franchise screen series › Literary and classic serial adaptations › Thriller and crime adaptations › Premiered 1962 to 2023

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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