Although HBO has billed Run as a "romantic comedic thriller," it takes quite a while for the thriller aspect to emerge, and when it does, it feels forced, a way to turn what is essentially a relationship drama into something with higher stakes and major cliffhangers. The show isn’t much of a comedy, either, and the 30-minute episode run times are more about keeping the plot moving than about framing the series in a comedy format. Even after five episodes, Run still seems to be figuring out what kind of show it is, taking unexpected turns that move it away from its initial core themes.
Those initial themes are more about regret and the passage of time than about suspense and danger, and the show works best when it stays in that mode. Former couple Ruby (Merritt Wever) and Billy (Domhnall Gleeson) haven’t seen each other in 17 years, since their college break-up, but they still have a pact that if one texts the word "run" to the other, and gets a response within 24 hours, they will meet up on a train in New York City and travel across the country for a week, dropping everything for each other. As the first episode opens, Ruby is sitting in a supermarket parking lot feeling demoralized about her life full of errands and making sure she’s home to receive a delivery for her husband, when she gets Billy’s text and responds almost immediately.
There’s a bit of humor in the beginning, as Ruby makes this clearly momentous decision while dramatic music swells, and then can’t open her door because she’s parked too close to another car. But that’s probably the height of the show's comedy. "I can only make confusing half-jokes," Ruby confesses to Billy in the second episode, and the show’s sense of humor is at about the same level. There are plenty of awkward moments as Ruby rushes from California to New York to connect with Billy and when the two of them have their first encounter in nearly two decades. There isn’t much to laugh at, though, and there’s even less humor as the series goes on.
The early episodes most closely resemble something like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, in which two people who once had an intense emotional connection reunite after many years apart, feeling that connection renewed but also weighed down by all the baggage of the intervening years. Ruby has a husband and two kids and is lamenting her lost career aspirations. Billy has become a moderately successful self-help guru who, of course, can dole out advice to others but can’t get his own life in order. They tentatively reveal these details to each other as they sit on the train, dancing around the idea of further emotional and physical intimacy.
Wever and Gleeson are both strong in these delicate scenes, and Wever in particular gets a much-deserved showcase for her talents, which have mostly been used in supporting roles on shows like Nurse Jackie and the Netflix Western Godless. Although he eventually gets more flashbacks to highlight his troubled past, Billy is clearly the less interesting and less important character here, and his problems are much more narcissistic and less relatable. Yes, Ruby has abandoned her family to reconnect with an old flame, but the rut that she finds herself stuck in is much more understandable than Billy’s dissatisfaction with his lucrative self-help empire of seminars and bestselling books.
So there’s plenty of drama just in seeing how these two navigate their sudden reunion, and how it contrasts to the lives they’ve been living. But creator Vicky Jones, who previously worked with executive producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Killing Eve, Fleabag and Crashing, won’t let the story stay in that place. As the season goes on, Ruby and Billy end up with an antagonist of sorts in Billy’s ruthless business partner Fiona (Archie Panjabi), who resents him for abandoning their successful company, and their activities escalate from deception to something more criminal.
Panjabi digs into the role of the devious schemer, although too much of the plot hinges on characters not revealing basic information to each other. On Ruby’s side, Rich Sommer plays her husband Laurence as basically the same smarmy, entitled bro he’s played on shows including Mad Men and GLOW, and while he’s clearly been wronged by her sudden absence, he doesn’t have enough of a presence to be sympathetic. Phoebe Waller-Bridge shows up briefly in the fifth episode as a backwoods taxidermist who helps Ruby and Billy out of a jam, and her presence underscores how much better she’s been at depicting these kinds of self-destructive characters in other shows she’s written and produced (although it’s not clear how closely she’s involved in creative decisions here).
With most of the action in the early episodes taking place aboard the cross-country train, Run has literal momentum, and the kind of tension that comes from setting nearly every scene in a small, confined space. But it suffers from a tonal and narrative identity crisis that only gets more frustrating as the season progresses. Ruby and Billy are complex characters stuck in a show that doesn’t seem to know what to do with them.
Starring Merritt Wever and Domhnall Gleeson, Run premieres April 12 on HBO at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT.