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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Entertainment
Katie Rosseinsky

Lazarus review – Strange, silly and embarrassingly compelling

I feel frankly exhausted just thinking about Harlan Coben’s work ethic. The American author somehow manages to publish a brand new airport thriller every single year. New TV adaptations of his work (on which he tends to serve as executive producer) crop up almost as frequently. He’s also just released a book written in collaboration with Reese Witherspoon. Knackering, right?

And somehow, amid all of this, he has found the time to co-create a brand new TV series, Prime Video’s Lazarus, alongside Danny Brocklehurst, the screenwriter who has headed up plenty of past Coben series. Has this man ever taken a holiday? Does he ever press snooze, or sit on the sofa scrolling on his phone? Or does he simply spend every hour of the day and night coming up with outlandish plot twists?

If he does take the latter approach, it might account for the fever dream quality that envelopes Lazarus. Coben adaptations such as Too Close and Missing You required us to suspend our disbelief quite significantly, sure (and not just because they seemed to take very American character names and story beats wholesale and drop them slap bang into the northwest of England). But Lazarus sees the author and his co-writer Brocklehurst venturing into the realms of the supernatural, with all the bizarre new plot possibilities that affords.

Sam Claflin is Joel Lazarus, a forensic psychiatrist who returns to his hometown after his father Jonathan, played in flashback by Bill Nighy, dies by suicide, 25 years after his twin sister Sutton was murdered. The note that Jonathan leaves behind, though, raises far more questions than it answers, and Joel isn’t convinced that his dad, who also worked as a psychiatrist, actually took his own life.

Joel (Sam Claflin), left, is convinced that there is more to the suicide of his father John (Bill Nighy) than meets the eye (Prime Video)

When he visits his father’s offices, he is overcome by disturbing visions of past patients. The offices in question bear closer resemblance to a fancy Art Deco bank than the average shrink’s rooms, and also feature what may or may not be a spectacularly unflattering sculptural rendering of Nighy’s head (surely a psychiatrist who proudly displays such a portrait would be a worthwhile subject of analysis themselves).

The apparitions, and the stories they share, end up drawing him into a series of cold-case murders, which may or may not be linked to Sutton’s murder. As is the custom with Coben shows, “Laz” has a useful best friend, played by Am I Being Unreasonable?’s David Fynn, whose work as a police officer conveniently gives him access to old files and intel that might shed some light on this spate of deaths.

The mystery that unspools is convoluted, with new spectral characters strolling into almost every episode and frequent flashbacks to a time when Laz sported a curtain hairdo worthy of a Nineties boyband member. It’s often clichéd: there are plenty of scenes where suspects either stand lurking in dark corners or stare moodily from under hoods, and Claflin and co have to labour under some pretty chewy dialogue. Describing Dr Lazarus Sr as someone who “delved into minds for a living” once is bad enough, but twice is arguably unforgivable; people simply do not talk this way in real life. You might also end up wishing that Nighy had more to do than pace around fiddling with his glasses.

And yet, as ever with Coben, Lazarus is embarrassingly compelling. As strange and often silly as the storyline may be, it’s plotted as if it has been precision engineered to hook you in; just when you think the main mystery is about to be all wrapped up, another curveball lands. It’s unlikely to win over any Harlan haters, but for those of us with a soft spot for his particular brand of larger-than-life mysteries, it’s incredibly moreish.

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