James Nesbitt makes parental fear credible even when the mystery surrounding it is not. We value that emotional directness, though the repeated thriller roles risk making his distress too familiar.
Fi1m perspective
In Run Away (2026), James Nesbitt makes Simon Greene's parental fear convincing through some increasingly unlikely plotting. We believe the distress without having to accept every twist. His performance is the main reason we would give this uneven family-secret thriller a chance. The difficulty comes when the script insists on explaining what he has already made clear.
Cold Feet (1997) made his name as Adam Williams, with the energy and appetite for life associated with his earlier comic work. Bloody Sunday (2002) marked the move into serious drama; The Missing (2014), with Nesbitt as Tony Hughes, put him at the centre of a missing-child story. Grieving and hard-bitten men have become familiar assignments. The danger of repetition is apparent in Suspect (2022), where the thriller manner risks becoming cartoonish. We would like to see more of the possibilities suggested by that earlier shift.
He also keeps his Northern Irish accent across roles, a welcome consistency in work that has shifted between comedy and drama. In Run Away, Ruth Jones, as Elena Ravenscroft, provides another reason to stay when we begin to question the story. The ensemble is less assured elsewhere, leaving both actors to do too much of the work. Their performances make the weak dialogue more frustrating, because the feelings are already clear.
We were irritated by the hospital dialogue in Run Away, because its stock phrases spell out distress Nesbitt has already made credible. Luke Richards's music cannot make those exchanges convincing; fewer words would help more. We would rather watch Nesbitt respond to trouble than hear him describe it in another borrowed phrase. Eight episodes is a substantial commitment to a mystery this uneven. Try it for him and Jones, provided an implausible twist will not undo an evening's enjoyment.
Biography
James Nesbitt is a Northern Irish actor born on 15 January 1965 in Ballymena, County Antrim. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, graduating in 1987.
His breakthrough television role was as Adam Williams in Cold Feet (1998–2003). He is known for film roles including Pig Finn in Waking Ned (1998), Ivan Cooper in Bloody Sunday (2002), Detective Banner in Match Point (2005) and Bofur in the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), as well as Tony Hughes in The Missing (2014). He appeared as Simon Greene in the 2026 series Run Away. Nesbitt was appointed OBE in 2016 for services to drama and the community in Northern Ireland.
